More sexual abuse claims against Aids workers add to scandal

MORE than two dozen women in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have come forward with claims of sexual abuse by aid workers during an Ebola outbreak, adding to a scandal that broke last year, a report said yesterday.

Twenty-two women have said they were sexually exploited or abused, in acts that included rape or led to unwanted pregnancies, by male aid workers responding to an Ebola crisis in eastern DRC, The New Humanitarian (TNH) and the Thomson Reuters Foundation said. The men offered them jobs in exchange for sex, identifying themselves as working for major aid organisations.

Three of the seven organisations named are UN agencies, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), which features in 14 of the claims.

The allegations centre on Butembo, a major trading city and an epicentre of the 2018/20 outbreak of Ebola that claimed 2 200 lives.

“One woman said she was raped by a man who said he was with the WHO, and reporters learned of three others who said they had become pregnant,” the investigators said.

“One of those women died after a botched abortion as she tried to conceal the pregnancy from her husband and children, her sister said.”

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An investigation last year by the TNH, a news agency that covers humanitarian crises, gathered testimony from 51 women who said they had suffered sexual exploitation in the neighbouring city of Beni

The WHO, reacting to the latest accusations, said yesterday it had identified two women in Butembo as “potentially having had sexually exploitative relationships with individuals” connected to the agency.