UN: WOMEN IN SYRIA SUFFER ABUSE IN EXCHANGE FOR AID

Endemic exploitation leaves women and girls who visit relief collection points stigmatised for ‘providing favours’

Syrian women in need of humanitarian assistance are being sexually exploited by men distributing aid on behalf of the United Nations and charities.

The findings of a report on gender-based violence by the UN’s Population Fund revealed that in some provinces food and lifts home were being provided in exchange for sexual favours.

The report – Voices from Syria

2018 – listed examples of how women were blackmailed by distributors, who were local officials working in areas of the war-torn country international charities were unable to access.

“Examples were given of women or girls marrying officials for a short period of time for ‘sexual services’ in order to receive meals; distributors asking for telephone numbers of women and girls; giving them lifts to their houses ‘to take something in return’ or obtaining distributions ‘in exchange for a visit to her home’ or ‘in exchange for services, such as spending a night with them’,” the document said.

“Women and girls ‘without male protectors’, such as widows and divorcees as well as femaleinternally displaced persons, were regarded as particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation,” it said.

Yet humanitarian agencies have apparently been aware of the abuse for three years, according to one whistleblower who said leading agencies had received reports of the abuse as early as 2015.

Danielle Spencer, a charity humanitarian adviser, said she heard reports from Syrian women at a refugee camp in Jordan in 2015 that male council workers were giving aid in exchange for sex.

Ms Spencer said the men, who were distributing aid in Daraa in the south-west and Quneitra in the west would withhold supplies to some women who visited distribution centres unless they had sex with them.

“It was so endemic that they couldn’t actually go without being stigmatised. It was assumed that if you went to these distributions, that you will have performed some kind of sexual act in return for aid,” she told the BBC.

Ms Spencer said she believed humanitarian agencies were ignoring the abuse reports because they needed third parties and local officials to get aid into some of the most dangerous parts of the country.

“Sexual exploitation and abuse of women and girls has

been ignored, it’s been known about and ignored for seven years,” she said.

Outside workers are often used by charities in areas where it is not safe to send aid workers, said Dr Christopher Phillips, a reader in international relations at Queen Mary, University of London.

“There’s often difficulty with getting insurance so they supplement their forces with third parties,” Dr Phillips told The National.

Separately, a report by the International Rescue Committee found that 40 per cent of 190 women surveyed said sexual violence had taken place when they tried to access humanitarian assistance in Daraa and Quneitra.

The warnings of aid for sex emerged after the Oxfam scandal, which revealed that aid workers had been paying prostitutes in earthquake-hit Haiti.