We need an inquiry into the international aid sector as there must be hundreds more Oxfam scandals out there
What happened within Oxfam is absolutely inexcusable. To make matters worse, we do not yet understand just how widespread the abuse is
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Your support makes all the difference.The sexual abuse that has been exposed within the aid sector is appalling. As details continue to emerge day by day, the crisis is only likely to grow further, and we now know the Oxfam scandal goes back as far as Liberia in 2004 and includes former aid agency Merlin.
And just as concerning as the actions of those few predators among the thousands of heroic humanitarian workers is the endemic culture of silence.
Too many people – from senior Oxfam executives to the Charity Commission and Government ministers – preferred to choose the easy way out, turn a blind eye or avoid asking uncomfortable questions. When they said “zero tolerance”, they clearly didn’t mean it.
What happened within Oxfam is absolutely inexcusable. To make matters worse, we do not yet understand just how widespread the abuse is. Back in October, I called on the Government and aid agencies to improve their mechanisms for handling sexual exploitation precisely because we must assume that there are hundreds more cases out there.
A full inquiry must now uncover how prevalent abuse is, how it is happening and what we can do to stop it.
Earlier this week, I urged the Government to quickly set up a global register to stop humanitarian workers involved in sexual abuse moving between agencies and countries, and I welcome International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt’s agreement to explore this as part of a range of reforms announced. I will soon visit Haiti to meet with disaster survivors in person, and next week will meet with Oxfam CEO Mark Goldring to discuss what these reforms must look like.
Some have, disgracefully, weaponised this appalling scandal by launching a full-frontal assault on UK aid.
This includes Priti Patel, who just three months after secretly meeting Israeli officials and lying to the British public has apparently rediscovered her moral convictions.
But there is no moral defence for cutting aid that helps millions of people in extreme poverty and those facing conflict and persecution, and saves hundreds of thousands of women and girls from sexual violence. This truly is a depraved kind of opportunism.
Responding to the abuse and exploitation of vulnerable people by cutting this funding will only serve to put them at greater risk.
Our focus must be on reform and change, not throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Reform must not be superficial, and must go further than tweaking procedures and systems.
Like the #MeToo movement that shone a light on the worst excesses of Hollywood, the President’s Club and Westminster, sexual abuse in the aid sector is yet another example of people in positions of influence abusing their power.
Where institutions hoard or abuse power, international development agencies are supposed to stand on the side of people who desperately need their help.
They are supposed to redistribute power, and to challenge abuse, proactively, wherever they see it. Oxfam has clearly failed to do this.
Next month, Labour will be launching a new programme to look at shifting power away from an aid industry that looks increasingly broken, and put it back in the hands of people.
Aid agencies that do not confront rotten abuse of power and sexual exploitation, or do not put people before profit, should have no place in international development.
Public trust has been badly damaged. The truth is that aid agencies themselves must now change quickly – or cease to exist.
Kate Osamor is a Labour MP and Shadow Secretary of State for International Development
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