Ministers to investigate aid abuse ‘cover-up’

Government will pursue Priti Patel’s claims her sex scandal warnings were dismissed

Christopher Hope, Harry Yorke

Martin Evans

MINISTERS have launched an investigation into claims that foreign aid officials brushed off allegations of child abuse committed by aid workers.

Priti Patel, who ran the Department for International Development (Dfid) until November, writes today in The Daily Telegraph that the Oxfam prostitution scandal is “the tip of the iceberg” but that her own officials “dismissed” her concerns when she raised them.

Oxfam, one of the world’s largest charities, is facing mounting criticism over its handling of sex allegations but has denied it tried to cover up the use of prostitutes by workers who were supposed to be helping victims of an earthquake in Haiti in 2011.

Paul Goldring, the charity’s chief executive, will meet Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, today after she threatened to withdraw millions of pounds of government funding to Oxfam.

He is expected to insist that Oxfam did not inform ministers of the abuse allegations in 2011 because it decided staff accused of paying prostitutes were not guilty of exchanging “sex for aid”.

Ms Mordaunt said the British charity had lied and failed in its “moral leadership” in the wake of the allegations.

Ms Patel today raises the political pressure on Ms Mordaunt by claiming that Dfid officials had failed to take her concerns seriously. She adds that the department’s civil servants failed to support her when she tried to raise concerns at the United Nations last September.

She says that as international devel- opment secretary, she had tried to ensure “accountability not just on aid effectiveness, but also the sexual abuse, not just of adults, but also the rape of children”.

She says: “I would like to say that I was supported and presented with facts from the department laying out the long history that UK governments, Labour and Conservative, had in tackling this global problem.

“Sadly, I can’t. When I raised this issue in Dfid, it was dismissed as only a problem with UN peacekeepers, which my subsequent investigations showed to be incorrect.”

Last night, Ms Mordaunt privately made clear she would investigate the claims and take action if she found any wrongdoing.

A Dfid source said: “We expect the highest standards from everyone we work with and that includes Dfid itself.”

Last night, Oxfam risked a new row when it insisted that it had not told Dfid officials about the use of the Haitian prostitutes because they were not “beneficiaries” of the charity’s support. An Oxfam source said: “Donors like Dfid would have wanted to know that this wasn’t a case of exchanging sex for aid.”

The charity also faced new claims that Oxfam aid workers posted to Chad repeatedly invited women believed to be prostitutes to the house where they were staying. Oxfam said it could not corroborate the latest claims.

Roland van Hauwermeiren, Oxfam’s country director in Haiti, who was allowed to resign after admitting his involvement in the prostitution scandal, was also head of the charity’s mission

to Chad at the time. In a stark warning last night, Ms Mordaunt – who will also speak with the Charity Commission, the regulator, this week to discuss the crisis – made clear that a failure to comply with safeguarding rules would result in the withdrawal of government funding.

Ms Mordaunt said: “The horrific behaviour by some members of Oxfam staff in Haiti in 2011 is an example of a wider issue on which Dfid is already taking action, both at home and with the international community via the UN.

“We will do everything in our power to support the vital work of the Charity Commission to properly regulate UK charities that work overseas.”

Every charity receiving aid money will be told to “declare all safeguarding concerns they are aware of, and confirm they have referred all concerns they have about specific cases and individuals to the relevant authorities”.

She said: “With regard to Oxfam and any other organisation that has safeguarding issues, we expect them to cooperate fully with such authorities, and we will cease to fund any organisation that does not.”

Caroline Thomson, Oxfam’s chairman of trustees in the UK, said the charity wanted “to satisfy ourselves that we do now have a culture of openness and transparency and that we fully learn the lessons of events in 2011”.

Separately, it also emerged that more than 120 workers employed by Britain’s leading charities have been accused of sexual abuse in the past year alone.

According to figures compiled by charities on sexual harassment in Britain and abroad, Oxfam recorded 87 incidents in 2017, Save the Children recorded 31, Christian Aid two, while the British Red Cross reported a “small number of cases”.

All four charities receive money from Dfid.