Countries demand answers from WHO on sex abuse claims

GENEVA: Dozens of countries voiced alarm at reports that World Health Organisation leaders knew of sexual abuse allegations against the UN agency’s staff and failed to report them.

Fifty-three countries, including the United States, the European Union, Britain and Japan, issued a joint statement on Friday demanding WHO chiefs display “strong and exemplary leadership” on preventing sexual abuse, following media reports WHO management knew of alleged cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo and did not act.

A report by the Associated Press news agency earlier this month said internal emails revealed that the management was aware of sexual abuse claims in the DR Congo in 2019.

Delivering the statement to the WHO’s main annual assembly, Canadian Ambassador Leslie Norton said the tone “must be set from the top” and that the signatories wanted “credible outcomes” on tackling the issue.

“Since January 2018, we have been raising deep concerns about allegations relating to matters of sexual exploitation and abuse, and sexual harassment, as well as abuse of authority, in regard to WHO activities,” she said.

Countries, she said, had raised the issue in a “robust and transparent manner” during a closed-door meeting of the WHO executive board last week.

“We expressed alarm at the suggestions in the media that WHO management knew of reported cases of sexual exploitation and abuse, and sexual harassment and had failed to report them, as required by UN and WHO protocol, as well as at allegations that WHO staff acted to suppress the cases.”

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the assembly that the body was “greatly disturbed by these allegations”.

“Any form of abusive behaviour is totally incompatible with WHO’s mission,” he said.

The WHO was left reeling last September after a year-long probe conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and The New Humanitarian documented alleged exploitation and abuse of women by staff parachuted into the DR Congo’s 2018-2020 Ebola crisis.

The investigation found that more than 50 women had accused Ebola aid workers – chiefly from the WHO but also from other UN agencies and leading non-governmental organisations – of sexual exploitation, including propositioning them, forcing them to have sex in exchange for a job or terminating contracts when they refused.

The similarities between the accounts given by women in the eastern DRC city of Beni suggested the practices were widespread, the report said.