Punish the abusers, not millions whose lives are saved by Oxfam
Why Minnie Driver’s wrong to dump shamed charity
The trip I made to eastern Chad with Oxfam in 2007 to report on the Darfuri refugee crisis for the Daily Mirror is one I will never forget.
The camps around Goz Beida are among the most inhospitable, desolate and violent places I have been – 45C heat, gunfire and dust.
In those conditions, Oxfam staff led by Roland van Hauwermeiren were bringing water to three million people displaced by war into a desert of barren scrubland.
It was extraordinary work, even by the standards of other work I had seen Oxfam do in Rwanda, Mozambique, South Sudan, East Timor, Kosovo and a dozen or so other conflict zones.
So, this week I could hardly contain my horror, learning what had happened in that Oxfam guest house in eastern Chad, the one that gave us shelter from the heat, gunfire and dust.
At that time, humanitarian agencies in Chad were under regular attack from rebel forces.
During one gunfight, Van Hauwermeiren – now at the centre of allegations in Haiti and Chad – personally helped us to safety.
When we were stranded across town while rival groups were shooting at each other, he risked his own safety during a security lockdown to turn up in a vehicle and take us to the Oxfam guest house where there was a bunker and food supplies.
So, like Minnie Driver, the actor who resigned as an Oxfam ambassador yesterday, and like supporters across the world, I was devastated to learn of the sexual abuse of power by which Van Hauwermeiren and others are now known to have exploited some of the globe’s poorest people.
Vulnerable women and even children who were dependent on their privileged abusers for help.
Around 1,200 Oxfam donors ended direct debits at the weekend. Driver is likely to be only the start of celebrities leaving charities, as the reputation management teams begin their work.
But when I think of that team in eastern Chad, going out exhausted every day into those camps, into that vicious heat, that danger and those endless hours of broken water pumps, sandstorms, and armed skirmishes, I can only think of wanting to stand with them and not to step away.
This has to be a #MeToo, #TimesUp moment for the aid world. But humanitarian work is not the film industry.
Wearing a black dress to the Oscars is not the same as hearing a water pump in eastern Chad stop shuddering in the earth, or watching emergency food and medical supplies dry up at the airstrip or seeing field hospitals close. The collapse of the film industry would be bitterly regretted, but not fatal to millions of children. With vicious irony, those refugees in eastern Chad – in camps like Djabal and Gassire – are among those with the most to lose from the scandal that happened in their remote part of the world. Living under tarpaulin held up with sticks, and living on food handouts, they are 100% reliant on aid. At this moment, across the world, aid agencies are struggling to respond to huge emergencies. The UN’s humanitarian overview estimates 135 million people will need help this year.
Syria is experiencing one of its bloodiest periods of conflict yet; 13 million lives are threatened by war in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the health system has collapsed in Yemen.
The Rohingya crisis is deepening; famine looms in Nigeria, South Sudan and Somalia.
Globally, the number of refugees has surpassed 22 million.
None of this means we shouldn’t attack Oxfam’s standards.
If donations stop, it isn’t Minnie Driver’s fault, it’s the fault of Van Hauwermeiren and the other men who betrayed the people they purported to help.
The problem is not just bad apples, it’s that the internal system wasn’t robust enough to identify, stop and prosecute abusers.
A blind eye has been turned to a swaggering type of white man who cuts a swathe through war zones.
This scandal is being shamelessly exploited by right-wing politicians who despise foreign aid.
Oxfam put itself in their sights when it spoke out about the political causes of poverty – exactly as
All sexual predators and child abusers in aid work must be turfed out
it should be doing. But all the more reason to be above reproach.
Oxfam must convince all of us its safeguarding measures are now the global gold standard.
It must root out every sexual predator and child abuser that has wheedled their way into aid work.
There must be justice for the women in Haiti and elsewhere who were exploited.
While that happens, we all have a choice how we respond. I believe we can condemn abuse without condemning millions to hunger, poverty, despair and death.
Scrolling through my memories of a decade in refugee camps, reporting on famines, floods, droughts and wars, I can only think of extraordinary kindness.
Nurses willing life into babies. Engineers trying to strike water again and again. An aid worker giving her own water to a child in a desert. Why should the abusers obliterate this tenderness?
Thinking about eastern Chad, I remembered a young boy who pushed a piece of paper into my pocket. He had written: “Now you come here to want to know the situation of refugees.” It contained a simple request, “Please help us”.
That’s the boy I would be betraying if I stopped my direct debit to Oxfam.