Oxfam knew 10 years ago of ‘urgent’ sex abuse problem
OXFAM’S sex abuse crisis deepened last night after it emerged that British aid agencies were warned 10 years ago of an “urgent problem” and the Haitian president accused charities of cover-ups.
A report presented to charities in 2008 claimed that children as young as six were being forced to sell sex to aid workers in exchange for cash, food and mobile phones.
The emergence of the document comes as Baroness Nicholson, the Conservative peer who herself runs a charity, told The Sunday Telegraph that ministers were presiding over a “rotten” foreign aid system where few checks were carried out on how taxpayers’ money was being used. The report by Save the Children highlighted how orphans were particularly at risk from abuse as they were made to view “transactional sex as a survival tactic”.
The authors warned that “every agency is at risk” from being infiltrated by perverts after their investigation identified “every kind of child sexual abuse and exploitation imaginable”, including rape, prostitution, sexual slavery and child pornography.
The report, No One To Turn To, investigated accounts of sex abuse by aid
workers and peacekeepers in Haiti, Ivory Coast and southern Sudan in 2007. It found abuse was “chronically under-reported” with victims fearing withdrawal of aid if they complained.
The report will make uncomfortable reading for Oxfam bosses who have been told they will no longer receive foreign aid after staff there were accused of indulging in sex parties while working in Haiti in 2011.
Jovenel Moise, Haiti’s president, yesterday said Oxfam’s sex scandal was “the tip of the iceberg” and that other aid agencies were covering up similar cases of abuse. “It is not only Oxfam,” he said. “There are other non-governmental organisations in the same situation, but they hide the information.”
He said Médecins Sans Frontières had repatriated 17 staff for misconduct which “was not explained”.
Lady Nicholson, a former director of Save the Children, accused Labour of “destroying” a world-class system when it separated the aid budget from the Foreign Office to create the Department for International Development (DfID). The peer runs Amar, a charity which employs Iraq locals to build and run health and education projects and receives funding from official bodies including the US State Department.
She said the charity had been repeatedly turned down for DfID funding in favour of larger international organisations. “The DfID doesn’t undertake, except in rare instances, regular monitoring. DfID is a rotten system,” she said.
She added that in contrast the US State Department monitored charity work “scrupulously”, including unannounced inspections.
A DfID spokesman said the department was “committed to spending every single penny of its aid budget wisely and without waste” and had introduced “tough new reforms ... to deliver value for money.”
An MSF spokesman said it took staff misconduct “very seriously” but was unclear over Mr Moise’s comments. She said staff repatriation could be down to illness, personal reasons, security issues or misconduct.
An Oxfam spokesman said: “As a result of the Save the Children report, a senior member of Oxfam staff visited Haiti and measures were put in place. However, these proved insufficient and could have been compromised by staff who were later investigated by Oxfam and found guilty of misconduct.”