Oxfam scandal widens to at least three countries
A confidence crisis spread through the international aid community Tuesday amid accusations that the charity Oxfam had buried reports that its workers had prostituted survivors of the Darfur genocide, a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti and possibly disasters beyond those.
Haitian President Jovenel Moïse condemned those involved in the scandal, saying on Twitter that “there is nothing more outrageous and dishonest than a sexual predator who uses his position as part of the humanitarian response to a natural disaster to exploit needy people in their moment of greatest vulnerability.”
His words echoed a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May, who this week condemned the “horrific behavior” within Oxfam, as her government opened an official inquiry into the charity and a top executive resigned in shame.
But the scandal may not stay limited to Oxfam. The Guardian reported that British politicians are demanding an investigation “across the wider aid sector,” as new reports claim vulnerable women were prostituted across multiple charities and countries and that warnings went ignored for much of the 21st century.
Many of the allegations center on one man: Roland van Hauwermeiren, who led Oxfam’s relief efforts in Chad in the mid-2000s, when a genocidal war in neighboring Sudan sent refugees and violence spilling across the border.
“Things are very, very desperate and are only likely to get worse. People are suffering; they are drinking dirty water and have nothing to eat,” van Hauwermeiren said in late 2006 in an Oxfam news release.
Citing a former aid worker, The Guardian reported Saturday that prostitutes were repeatedly invited to Oxfam’s living quarters in Chad and that van Hauwermeiren was aware of the activity, if not also involved in it. Oxfam has since admitted it knew of the allegations but it continued to put van Hauwermeiren in charge of humanitarian missions.
As an Oxfam country director, van Hauwermeiren went on to lead missions in Congo and then in Haiti after a deadly earthquake destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure and society in 2010.
About a year later, in late 2011, Oxfam cryptically announced that six workers had left the organization after an internal investigation revealed unspecified “misconduct” in Haiti — including “abuse of power and bullying” that brought the charity’s “name into disrepute.”
Van Hauwermeiren also had resigned, the statement read, taking “managerial responsibility” for the misconduct, whatever it was.
Nearly seven years later, on Thursday, a report in the Times of London revealed that van Hauwermeiren and several male workers — a small fraction of the more than 200 Oxfam workers in Haiti — had been accused of turning their guesthouse into what they allegedly called “the whorehouse.”