Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

Host countries damaged by poverty and war naturally have displaced people and it is not the case the peacekeepers and overseas aid workers are merely passive participants in the effects of deprivation and misery in host countries. Sometimes their arrival can actively create the problems. A note by the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1996 entitled “The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children” concluded:

“In six out of 12 country studies on sexual exploitation of children during armed conflict, the arrival of peace-keeping troops has been associated with a rapid rise in child prostitution.”

Most obviously, international peacekeepers and overseas aid workers have access to money, food, supplies and other resources that enable them to exercise influence over the population of the host country. This influence is frequently used improperly—for example, to obtain transactional sex. Women sometimes even have to sell their young daughters for food and supplies. That may be shocking but the fact that it happens just shows how desperate the victims are.

As I said at the beginning, overseas aid workers and international peacekeepers have incredibly important roles supporting the most vulnerable across the world. When they engage in sexual exploitation and abuse, they undermine the trust of the people they are meant to protect and of the people who support them at home. Public trust in charities has fallen since these matters were reported, so have donations. Ultimately, sexual exploitation and abuse undermine the efforts of those workers who conduct themselves properly.

Reading the reports of historical sexual exploitation and abuse by international peacekeepers and overseas aid workers, and the responses of organisations involved, provides a sense of déjà vu. First, there are the apologies, often expressed in general terms about falling short of standards, which are undefined. Secondly, there are frequent platitudes about “lessons being learned” and the interests of victims being at the forefront while ultimately inconclusive investigations are commissioned. During that stage, the perpetrators can be allowed to resign quietly and are free to take employment with another organisation operating in a different country, where they continue their abusive behaviour. Thirdly, there is a gradual loss of interest in the issue until, in five or six years’ time, the exact same thing happens again and the same people make the same excuses. That complacency has led to the trend of the last three decades and it must stop.

While ever I am on a Committee looking at how the aid budget is spent on behalf of our taxpayers, I will keep asking the questions that many do not want asked, which I have been doing since I first heard about this shocking problem at the world humanitarian summit in 2016 in Istanbul. I heard about the problem at one of the fringe meetings, where panellists from several different countries discussed the problem and admitted that nothing could be done about it. From that moment on, I asked about it in almost every IDC evidence session until it was recognised that something had to be done, but only when the Oxfam and Save the Children scandal happened was I finally taken seriously.

There are already fears in the current IDC that the latest round of complacency has arrived. In the evidence session on 7 May 2019, we were given an assurance by Frances Longley, then chief executive of Amref Health Africa UK, who said:

“As a sector, we are passionately committed to making that reporting better and more effective, and we absolutely stand side by side with you on that.”

But I wonder what is actually happening. Tracey Smith, then chief executive of British Expertise International, stated:

“The companies have shared best practice. They have looked at the way the sector operates. They have collaborated together, but it is felt that those specific, strategic issues, the support for survivors, cultural change, minimum standards, organisational capacity and capability, are covered by the code of conduct.”

Passion, collaboration and discussion do not produce results and will certainly not do so if they fall back on a vague code of conduct that has hitherto abjectly failed to ensure the safety of the most vulnerable women and girls across the world.

Three problems must be addressed to discourage potential abusers from exploiting women and girls and to support those who have been abused. They relate to reporting, investigation and whistleblowing. Victims of sexual exploitation and abuse encounter significant problems when they attempt to report their experiences. Many different legal regimes may operate in the context of international peacekeepers and overseas aid workers in mission host countries. There is international law, which often comes with immunity in respect of certain actions; the law of the perpetrator’s country, which may or may not provide redress; and the host country’s law, which cannot be reliable if the host country is in political turmoil.

Generally, victims lack the expertise to pursue their cases without legal assistance, and of course they lack the ability to pay for that legal assistance unless they rely on those organisations that may have been responsible for their abuse in the first instance. Different organisations have different structures and complaints procedures, and there may be so many operating in one area that it is impossible to know which the abuser belongs to. Reporting rape and sexual assault is difficult in the best of places, but as Professor Andrew MacLeod stated in the IDC’s evidence session on 6 October this year, in the context of host countries:

“It is like asking the victim of rape to report to the rapist”.

Often, the women or girls cannot read, so notices that we have been assured are pinned up for the victims to read go unread and therefore the complicated systems for reporting such abuse are a complete waste of time.

This situation is not improved by the behaviours of the institutions involved. In the evidence session on 6 October, Sienna Merope-Synge characterised the “practical reality” of the UN’s assistance as

“usually a black hole of information; that is the standard. At best it may be some charitable crumbs to the victim that is not based on an acknowledgement of legal rights and responsibility.”

In the minority of cases that are reported to the organisation involved, there is no guarantee that effective remedial action will be taken against the perpetrators, even when they are known and identified.

The Oxfam scandal of 2018 is probably the best known example of that. After an investigation by The Times in February of that year, it emerged that senior staff in Oxfam’s mission to Haiti, including the Belgian country director Roland van Hauwermeiren, had hired prostitutes at a villa rented by the charity. An internal investigation commenced, in which several of the abusers admitted using “prostitutes”. The internal report concluded that there was a culture of impunity among Oxfam staff and that some of the “prostitutes” could have been under age, yet that report remained confidential. The perpetrators were allowed to resign and the details disclosed to the Charity Commission were inadequate.

Shockingly, The Times reported that Dame Barbara Stocking, the chief executive of Oxfam at that time, offered van Hauwermeiren a “dignified exit”, because sacking him would have had potentially serious implications for the charity’s reputation. In other words, Oxfam was more concerned with looking good than doing good, and acquiesced in one of its top staff members enjoying all the acclaim of his position while performing none of his responsibilities towards the vulnerable people he was meant to protect. He had already been investigated for inappropriate sexual activity in 2011, when he had worked for Merlin, but he had been allowed to resign and go to another job elsewhere.

In numerous evidence sessions to the IDC, it has become apparent that the problem is not exclusive to Oxfam. Nevertheless, what I want to know is why they believe that women or girls are “prostitutes” rather than victims. How many people in this Chamber went to school with somebody who said, “When I grow up, I want to be a prostitute?” Exactly: these women or girls are victims, as are all sex workers.

Currently, frontline aid workers do not require Disclosure and Barring Service checks to operate in host countries. DBS checks ensure that people working with children and vulnerable adults do not have a history of abuse, which is an effective move towards protection. Since overseas aid workers support mainly very vulnerable children and adults, a requirement that they obtain DBS checks or something similar might improve the situation. There is an aid worker registration scheme that would prevent perpetrators of sexual exploitation and abuse from moving around the sector after their abuse has been detected. The scheme could be made effective if donors and Governments were encouraged to make their donations conditional on an organisation being a member of the scheme.

Twenty-one of the 30 major donors that form the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD have agreed to pilot the scheme. Regular reporting of safeguarding and misconduct data would also ensure that victims are actively sought out rather than expected to report their abuse to organisations that, understandably, they do not trust. The establishment of an ombudsman by the international aid community could reduce the complexity of legal systems and complaints procedures that contribute to the chronic under-reporting of sexual exploitation and abuse. Such abuse by peacekeepers and overseas aid workers is an appalling fact of life for vulnerable people in the world’s most deprived and war-torn areas. It is thought that because sexual exploitation and abuse of under-age children has been tackled primarily in the churches, particularly in this country through the Scouting and Guiding groups and all those other places where it was happening, many of the perpetrators are gravitating towards the aid sector because they can go abroad where they are anonymous and can get away not with murder, but with sexual exploitation and abuse. My hope is that effective reforms will be implemented to improve the situation and that the victims are not simply forgotten, as they have been time and again.

When my right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) was the Secretary of State for the Department for International Development, she had an international summit just across the road, where many of us present believed that much would be done and achieved as a result of a spotlight on the problem. Things have changed, but nowhere near enough. The whole culture must change, not only to ensure that proper reporting is done, but to stop men’s abuse of women and girls. Men need to know that there is absolutely no tolerance of such behaviour, and that if it happens they will be sacked immediately and will be unlikely to get another job where they have access to the most vulnerable.

I wish to ask the Minister what solutions the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has come up with to ensure that this country does not in future become complicit in any form of sexual exploitation and abuse of anyone, never mind the most vulnerable people in the world. What will the Department do to stop it happening again and again? How does the new, mighty Department plan to follow on from the female Secretaries of State for DFID?

Abuse can always happen where there is a power imbalance. By very definition, aid workers work with the most vulnerable people on the planet. The IDC is currently running an inquiry into the sexual exploitation of beneficiaries by aid workers, and I have discovered that there is a very unpleasant layering of racism, colonialism, and deep, deep sexism coming from the aid workers to the beneficiaries. We have to challenge this. We really need to see the Government stepping back on to this platform.

I spoke to a number of women aid workers who belong to a Facebook group that they set up when one of them was raped and did not know where to turn. There are now 8,000 women aid workers in that Facebook support group. They set it up to support one another when they were sexually harassed and abused by their colleagues, but when I spoke to them about the beneficiaries they said, “Of course it is going on there. If they do it to us, of course they are going to be doing it to the beneficiaries, where there is even less comeback or awareness and the power imbalance is even greater.” They described it as the wild west: these men—and it is almost exclusively men—coming in as saviours on their white horses, but now they tend to be white UN Hummers and Land Cruisers.

I want to focus a little bit on the UN, because a lot of the abuse we are seeing is by UN peacekeepers. We are very glad that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF appeared before our Committee. They are the two branches of the UN that have been on the front foot in trying to address abuses in the system. However, there are many branches to the UN and unfortunately the abuse is repeated time and again. It should not be. In 2013, a UN investigation declared sexual exploitation and abuse

“the most significant risk to UN peacekeeping missions, above and beyond other key risks including protection of civilians”.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself asserted that “a single substantiated case” of SEA

“involving UN personnel is one case too many”.

Yet civilian and military personnel associated with peacekeeping operations continue to perpetrate sexual exploitation and abuse, despite the development of policy frameworks designed to prevent it and hold perpetrators to account. However, the cycle of abuse—oh, shock!—and action, rather than focusing on prevention, is the reason we are constantly in this loop; and it is a loop and has been going on since that statement. Haiti continued from 2004 to 2017, with peacekeepers stationed there trading sex with children for food, and dozens of women left pregnant from rape.

I have discovered that there is almost a currency exchange going on. I speak to different peacekeepers and aid workers in camps around the world, and it is standard: “If you want a tarpaulin, I spend the night with your daughter.” That is the exchange that we are allowing to be perpetuated. From 2013 to 2015 in Central African Republic, more than 108 cases were investigated, including the sexual abuse of women and children. Twenty-six peacekeepers, from France, Chad and Equatorial Guinea, were accused of forcing children into acts of bestiality. Human Rights Watch also documented gang rapes by armed UN peacekeepers near the base where women were scrabbling around looking for food. They were then threatened with death if they reported it.

In 2017 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, UN peacekeepers were accused of rape, sexual abuse and exploitation, accounting for roughly a third of all allegations against peacekeepers in 2017. Women, again, were left pregnant and forced to care for children on their own. Video from Tel Aviv in 2020 shows a woman straddling a man in the back seat of a vehicle from the UN Truce Supervision Organisation unit.

The reason it keeps on happening is that the focus is on the victims to report, and then on banning the perpetrators once they are discovered. It is just not realistic. In the DRC, one organisation had 23 reporting mechanisms, but they were not being used and it took journalists to uncover what was going on. We keep hearing, particularly of the UN, that there is a culture of impunity. The UN says that it has zero tolerance, but in the DRC, UN-marked vehicles were driving the perpetrators to hotels to “interview” the women for jobs. There was also a lot of hostility in DRC towards aid workers. Are we really surprised?

Yesterday, we had a session looking at the report by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact on abuses carried out by peacekeepers, and it became clear that there was a lack of commitment in middle management, leading to that feeling of impunity. There is no regulatory body for the UN. The UK could push for that. Transactional sex versus sexual exploitation: there is allowed to be a grey area for what is or is not acceptable. Let us just say that sex with any beneficiary is not acceptable. The UN’s whistleblower protection is, to be honest, useless.

We need an independent mechanism to give confidence to victims. To make lasting change we need strong leadership. I say that, because I know the Minister can do this: he can give us that leadership and take personal responsibility for tackling sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector, and make it his priority. He can ensure that the UK uses its diplomatic ties with the UN and Governments around the world to start meaningful discussions on how we can get justice for victims and survivors.

Why does the UK not contribute to the UN trust fund in support of victims of sexual exploitation and abuse? As to prevention, mechanisms to prevent SEA and provide support for victims and survivors should be incorporated in the design of all aid programmes, and budgeted for, from the start. The Government should fund only aid organisations that can demonstrate how to militate against sexual exploitation and that that is integral in all of their work. Aid organisations should challenge the extreme power imbalances between the people delivering aid and the local populations receiving it. The Minister should be championing that and challenging those imbalances. I understand why we are shifting resources from the ongoing humanitarian crisis to the covid-19 response, but we still need to do the base work. The Government have put significant time, energy and resources into looking at the perpetrators and how to prevent them from working, but we need to put the same energy into preventing those abusers from having access to potential victims.

I echo the final point made by the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire: we cannot expect victims to come forward and report. We need to be there on the ground—preventing, looking and, most importantly, listening. I have one final ask for the Minister, which is really simple. Currently, NGOs cannot access DBS checks. We need to expand what is classified as regulated activity, and then we can stop this parade of people going to exploit the most vulnerable in the world.

Through their work over the past 10 years, the Government have put themselves at the centre of international development. The UK Government are an acknowledged world leader on these issues, which is why it is important to hear from the Minister how they are taking forward that leadership position. If one thing is for sure, the UK Government cannot step back from that now. We have to step up to the plate and continue to use vigorously our international development clout, which we undoubtedly have, for the good of the sort of people we are talking about.

In their response to the most recent Select Committee report—the Committee has produced two and I think it has almost finished a third report on this issue—the Government rightly said that things cannot be changed in a short period of time. It requires a sustained commitment from each Minister who holds the portfolio that my hon. Friend the Minister has at the moment so that we can see a change, not just in the mechanisms, as has been said today in this debate, but in the ingrained culture that pervades these organisations.

That culture is pervasive because, as the Chair of the Select Committee has said, people who prey on the vulnerable go to where the vulnerable are, whether it is at home or abroad. The recent evidence that the Select Committee has taken for its third report has underlined that. We are talking about a group of workers who have remote and insecure tenure and we have a group of people who are in need of support and have no power at all; they are the most vulnerable people on the planet.

We need clarity from the Government, both today in this debate and in the long term, as to where the international development portfolio sits within the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I am an enormous supporter of the merging of the two Departments, as it could be a power for good to have the leadership of the Foreign Secretary on these issues. That is not to take away from previous International Development Secretaries, but that leadership puts it at the heart of the most powerful people in our Government. However, I am not clear as to exactly where the international development strategy lies within the former Foreign Office’s body of work on a daily basis. I would be grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister if he could set that out today.

I believe that the FCDO—or the former Foreign Office—has a fantastic track record on issues to do with women’s rights around the world, whether under William Hague, when he was dealing with women in areas of conflict, or, indeed, when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister had that role, dealing with education for girls around the world. This is strongly within Foreign Office culture , but the Minister needs to set out today and as the weeks go on, exactly how that strategy will be embedded in the new departmental structure, as it is important that people understand that.

I believe my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire has talked about this: the 2018 to 2030 strategic vision for gender equality on international development is crucial. It is an important piece of work that sets out the Government’s long-term commitment to issues of gender equality around the world. The issue of sexual exploitation is at the heart of that.

Can the Minister reconfirm the Government’s commitment to that strategic vision in its entirety at this stage, and that they are looking at the more practical measures that the Select Committee has now put forward on two occasions to make sure that there is lasting change on issues of sexual exploitation? Embedding measures around whistleblowing and reporting are crucial, as is having that strategic vision at the heart of the Government’s work.

In conclusion, under the newly formed FCDO, the Government have an opportunity to renew their international credentials on these issues of support for women around the world. Sexual exploitation, unfortunately, is not going away. Action taken over the last 10 years has put this Government at the centre of these issues on the global stage, and we must not stand back now. Tackling sexual exploitation needs to be at the heart of the FCDO’s strategy for gender equality as we move forward.

I know my hon. Friend the Minister is a great champion of these issues. He is a man of great integrity, and I know that he will bring that to this job. I look to him to ensure that within the Government’s work, this is not just something that is talked about in Westminster Hall debates, but is tackled on a daily basis—not just within his portfolio, but by all of his colleagues within the newly formed Department.

It makes my blood boil when I hear that those in power have used and abused their important positions for a loaf of bread. Would anyone here give someone a loaf of bread with a condition attached? No, we would not—or at least I would not, and neither would anyone else in this Chamber. We would give it to them because they wanted it. Would we give someone a tarpaulin because they wanted and needed it? Of course we would, and we would not attach a condition to it. Why is it that these people, including UN peacekeepers and some charity workers, are using their position in such an obscene, violent and criminal way? They are there to help; they are not there to abuse underage children. It absolutely shocks me to the core when I think of what those people have done. I tell you what—no, I cannot say what I was about to say; that would be wrong. I will just say this: let the law of the land take control and bring them to account.

Bond has suggested a number of ways in which we in this place can play our part. First, we should make safeguarding in aid and development a political priority, ensuring that core safeguarding is funded effectively through the grant and contracting processes. I say to the Minister that that is key. It is about making sure that those NGOs and charities have in place a methodology that makes these people accountable.

We need a requirement to ensure that new systems reach the most marginalised and invest in prevention. Bond states:

“In the past two years, increased resources have been dedicated to the development of policies, systems and structures, providing a sound platform for reports to be sensitively and effectively handled and responded to. A vital next step is to ensure that these new systems reach marginalised people in the communities in which NGOs are working.”

NGOs are on the frontline. They have a position of incredible responsibility, but they should be using it for the vulnerable people—for those people who need help. Just help them—do not take advantage of them. Bond adds that investment should go to

“prevention, rather than waiting for people to speak up when the damage has been done”.

We also need UK legislation to widen the meaning of regulated activity. Perhaps legislation needs to be tweaked in order to provide an obligation for NGO workers to have DBS checks, and to require NGOs to report to the DBS any cases where harm has been caused, so that these individuals can be not just legally barred but made accountable in the courts of the land and prevented from working with children and at-risk people. Making such checks available to NGOs should be a priority, so I ask the Minister: how will that protection be provided? I know that he is going to reply to the debate, but speaking honestly and from the bottom of my heart, I think we all want that to be in place.

You have been clear about the time, Mr Hollobone, so I will conclude with this. There are many issues that we cannot control, but there are others that we can and we must sow them. This new way of doing things must take priority. We must put in place a new system of working in partnership with NGOs that goes beyond funding. Were direct Government workers to be found guilty of exploitation, we would make changes to prevent repeats. If that is our approach in this land, let us do it in other lands as well. I know that the responsibility for running these charities does not belong to us in this House, but we still have an obligation to make safeguarding changes that permeate through the NGOs, as we seek to ensure that every penny that we put into the charities helps people and does not abuse and exploit the vulnerable any further.

“They threatened to murder my whole family. They have also shown me my naked video and pictures which they have taken on their mobile while raping me.”

She was placed in a shelter for women and girls, but what is really shocking is that when her case was heard in court, the Lahore High Court judge determined that she should be returned to her abductor. She actually had to return to his home. Fortunately, however, she managed to escape. Her lawyer states:

“Maira’s life is in constant danger because she is condemned as an apostate by her abductor and his supporters. Unless Maira and her family can leave Pakistan they will always be at risk of being killed.”

Aid to the Church in Need has launched a petition on her behalf. Her case is ongoing, but she is now forever in danger in her home country. There is the threat of honour killing. Extremists in Pakistan have said that they will kill her at the first chance. Her lawyer has said that men are looking for her, knocking on doors and asking for her whereabouts.

That is all happening while the UK Government continue to pay millions of taxpayers’ money to Pakistan. We need to ask some really important questions. What is being done to protect these vulnerable minority women and girls? How is some of the money being used to support them? What are our aid workers doing on the ground to address this issue? It is not a small issue—thousands of young women are affected. What challenges are our Government making to a judicial system that returns the abused to her abuser? Are the Government putting in place strategic plans to address the issue? To which projects does UK aid contribute to support these vulnerable women and girls? What effective challenges have been made by the UK Government against the utterly unjust blasphemy laws, so often cited to justify such atrocities? Why should such enormous amounts of money continue to be paid to a country that so blatantly fails to address such breaches in fundamental human rights?

Yet, in recent years the bond of trust and faith in our NGOs and those multilateral organisations has been severely damaged by persistent examples of sexual exploitation and abuse by aid workers, some of which has already been mentioned. In 2002, the UNHCR and Save the Children reported that there had been 67 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by 40 aid agencies and nine peacekeeping battalions in Africa.

In 2004, Kate Holt documented sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers in the DRC. In 2007 and 2008, a study documented that sexual exploitation and abuse was widespread and common knowledge in aid agencies in Kenya, Namibia and Thailand. The list goes on and on. The same can be said for 2008, 2015 and 2018, which saw exploitation in Syria, the DRC and the Central African Republic. These are not exceptions; they are just the incidences that we know about. That is where the problem lies. Imagine the horror of recognising that those who are there to help turn out to be the exploiters and abusers who harm the very people they are there to protect.

Earlier this year, the UN recognised the International Day of UN Peacekeepers. Across this country, we marked the extraordinary work of many peacekeepers across the world. It was right to do that, but it was also a reminder of the work we have to do to ensure that sexual exploitation and abuse is eradicated. Although many in this Chamber joined me in marking that day, I was struck by the remarkable number of people who chose not to do so due to the reports that I have just referenced.

Despite the reports that have been published and the press attention that come with them, the matter is under-reported. The lack of attention given to the matter does not reflect the incredibly high level of abuse and exploitation. We need to rectify that by collating and documenting information, and protecting survivors so that we can identify abuse and prevent it in future years.

Fortunately, I believe there is a solution. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on preventing sexual violence in conflict, and having worked with Lord Hague when he set up that initiative in 2012, I believe there is a way in which we can end the culture of impunity and tackle sexual abuse and violence in conflicts and crises around the world. One-hundred and forty-seven nations have signed our UN resolution on this topic. It is time we took the action we promised all those years ago and ended the mindset that those who perpetrate such crimes can escape justice. We need radical action to ensure that no one, in any place across the globe, will be able to escape justice if they commit acts of sexual abuse and exploitation.

As faith in multilateral organisations has been so severely hampered over the last few years, I believe that the UK should look to create a new international body that documents crimes, supports survivors and helps to launch prosecutions. Not only would an organisation with this three-pillared approach be a conduit for international organisations to feed in their accounts of sexual exploitation and abuse; it would also allow citizens of every country to seek assistance and to know that the international community is safeguarding their rights, in order to restore the faith that has been so badly lost.

Next year we hold the presidency of the G7. I believe this would be the most opportune moment to launch such an international body—I apologise to the Minister, because I made the same point to him yesterday in this Chamber, but we might as well be consistent. Coupled with a 3% ring fence of our aid budget to tackle gender-based violence, I believe that would reassure people at home and abroad that the UK is still a force for good and that we will not shirk our international responsibilities.

To conclude on a slightly more positive note, I was delighted to read earlier this year about the first ever Pakistani female engagement team, who were deployed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The team, which included psychologists, stress councillors, doctors and nurses, was the right step to help rebuild faith in our peacekeeping missions across the globe. I hope that many other organisations will be taking note and will do the work that is so desperately needed to rebuild the relationship between survivor and aid agency.

Later this month, on 25 November, it is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. I am working with Parliaments across the world on a statement of intent and action. We will be holding our own debate in this place on gender-based violence and the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development, which I am sure the Minister will probably respond to. I am incredibly grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham, who has already agreed to sign the letter, copies of which I will be sending out later. We have the opportunity to take action. The UK has the platform to do so next year. We need a new international body, and it should be here in the UK, where we are leading by action, not just warm words.

“Predators now target the aid industry to join because they know they get away with it.”

As a result of recent inquiries in Parliament, humanitarian groups and five of seven UN agencies, including the WHO, UNICEF, the International Organisation for Migration, World Vision and the medical non-governmental organisation Alama, have now announced inquiries into the matter. Although I welcome that recognition of the problem, which is overdue, it is far too easy just to talk of “zero tolerance”. Those words come very easily; the challenge is in actually doing something about it. Sadly, it will take a great deal more than simply expressing disapproval to ensure that lasting change is to happen, as the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said.

Yes, there needs to be a culture of safeguarding within aid agencies and organisations—we are all familiar with that and need to ensure it happens—but there also needs to be a culture in which concerns can be reported and taken seriously without fear of consequence, apart from the consequences that need to arise from those concerns being reported. People need to know that their concerns, when expressed, will be taken seriously, particularly victims, but also those within aid organisations who know what is going on and perhaps do not feel that they have the power to report their concerns.

When we deal with aid agencies, we are dealing with organisations that are by definition at the sharp end of the human experience, operating as they do in areas where civil society has perhaps broken down, whether through conflict or chaos. Many of our own domestic institutions have struggled to deal with accusations of sexual abuse, in a country with a functioning judiciary and legal system. We should not underestimate the difficulties of trying to tackle sexual abuse in situations of chaos and conflict, but that cultural change needs to happen nevertheless. One fundamental thing that we could do that would greatly assist that would be to ensure that more women are represented in aid agencies in leadership, management and frontline positions—I am pleased to see so many hon. Members nodding—to ensure balance and supervision that might not otherwise be there. I do not mean to decry the men working in aid agencies who do their very best and are not party to the abuse, but we need that balance, which could help to bring about and embed the necessary cultural change to challenge the abuse that operates in plain sight.

We need to provide mechanisms to ensure that those who are abused never have to report that abuse to an abuser. We need to find ways of ensuring that recipients of aid—no matter where they are or what their situation, their level of literacy or their access to technology—are made aware that aid is not a transaction: that there is no cost to them and that aid agencies are there to provide aid unconditionally. All that requires leadership, clarity, organisational effectiveness and an improvement of culture in the aid organisations, and is urgently necessary to maintain public confidence, particularly among those who receive the aid.

It is also fair to say that a Government response is required. As I draw my remarks to a close, I will make, I hope, a few constructive suggestions, which I would be grateful if the Minister considered. The UK Government’s reputation in international development is long established and well earned. That authority, together with membership of the permanent five on the UN Security Council, gives the UK Government a particularly strong leadership role in demanding reforms of the United Nations and its agencies—the UN sets a standard that many other agencies will follow. Our leadership position would allow us to embed that culture of internal and external accountability.

We could also do more to facilitate the prosecution of alleged perpetrators of abuse. Too often, it is left to the jurisdictions of the countries where the aid is distributed to deliver justice, when civil society may have substantially broken down and there is chaos. We could allow for prosecution at home. We could allow for a special tribunal to carry out those sorts of prosecutions and to make sure the rights of whistleblowers are defended, particularly regarding abusers but also those who are accused but not as yet deemed guilty, to protect everyone’s rights and also to make sure that mechanism of accountability exists.

The FCDO could also lead in establishing a global register of aid workers, which could allow us to track perpetrators of abuse as they seek to move around countries and agencies. I do not underestimate the challenge, but I think it would be a strong declaration of intent, and a practical way to try to eliminate that sort of behaviour and keep those who are not entering the aid sector with positive motivations away from the most vulnerable as they move around agencies and around the world. We could do a great deal more to build up civil society, strengthening the role of women not only within aid organisations but within civil society, as we seek to rebuild it in those zones that are receiving aid. There is also work to be done to embed a culture of training aid workers to spot abuse and empower those they are there to help, and to help people be aware of their rights and how to challenge and report abuses.

In drawing my remarks to a close, I will say that we have a position of leadership. Many of us—certainly in my party, and I know others across the House—had some concerns about the merger of DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We need to be assured that the Government will dedicate the efforts and resource needed to play a part and, more importantly, to help to restore the reputations of aid agencies around the world. We are in a unique position to do that, and I look to the Minister to tell us how we can carry that out.