I speak to the report issued this morning by the International Development Committee titled “Progress on tackling the sexual exploitation and abuse of aid beneficiaries”. I thank the Chair and members of the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time in the Chamber for this statement, and the sponsors and contributors to this afternoon’s debates for their understanding.
We launched our inquiry in July 2020, and we are very grateful to everyone who provided evidence to inform our work. I would particularly like to thank our specialist advisers and the wonderful Committee staff, who have provided invaluable support throughout—plus, of course, my fellow MPs on the Committee.
Sexual exploitation and abuse of beneficiaries is still happening, and it is happening with impunity. In February 2018, the aid sector was rocked by revelations that aid workers had been paying local vulnerable women for sex in Haiti while they were meant to be working on the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake. During the investigations that followed, it became clear that organisations involved put limiting reputational damage ahead of fulfilling the duty to report and challenge abuse.
That case did not occur in a vacuum; our inquiry shows that sexual exploitation and abuse is endemic in the aid sector. Twenty-six per cent. of respondents to the Committee’s online survey claimed to have witnessed sexual exploitation and abuse of aid recipients. That disgusts me, but it does not come as a surprise. Abuse can happen whenever there is a power imbalance. Extreme power imbalances are almost always at the heart of humanitarian responses. Local populations are totally reliant on aid workers for their most basic needs, and perpetrators know the power that affords them.
Aid organisations should be alert to the obvious risk that they will be targeted by individuals intent on abusing vulnerable people, but all too often there is a lack of concerted action to face up to this reality. Aid organisations therefore become complicit in enabling sexual exploitation and abuse to occur.
I am proud that in the wake of the Haiti scandal, the Department for International Development was at the forefront of efforts to tackle abuse. International safeguarding summits were arranged, commitments were signed and working groups were convened. Numerous organisations in receipt of UK aid funding have taken steps showing their commitment to tackling sexual abuse. Many hired preventing abuse co-ordinators, while others introduced new training for staff. Recently, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office published a strategy on safeguarding against sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector.
Clearly, there is not a lack of policies and procedures in place, yet abuse is still happening, and the UK Government continue to fund organisations at the centre of sexual abuse scandals. Some 73% of people who responded to our survey think that sexual exploitation and abuse of aid beneficiaries is still a problem. The Committee agrees. Abuse within the aid sector is rife, and until we accept this, we will not resolve it. Alina Potts from the Empowered Aid project gave evidence to our inquiry about its work looking at how survival equipment is distributed to refugees in Uganda and Lebanon. It found that sexual exploitation and abuse by aid and non-aid actors is pervasive across all points of distribution. Alina told us that, of the many women who reported sexual abuse, the majority were abused to access aid that they were unknowingly already entitled to. This behaviour must be robustly challenged, yet a third of respondents to our survey thought their organisations had made little or no progress on ensuring that aid recipients know their rights, including how to report cases of exploitation and abuse. My Committee strongly recommends that all aid agencies make a point of telling recipients their rights and entitlements and how to complain.