Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) for securing this crucial debate. It was a real pleasure to serve with her on the Select Committee on International Development, and I commend that Committee and its excellent Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), as well as her predecessor, Stephen Twigg, for their consistent and relentless attention—particularly that of the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire—to these crucial issues over many years. We have heard some excellent contributions today, from the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall)—I know he said he was not distinguished, but I thought it was an excellent and absolutely sincerely meant contribution—as well as the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and of course the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), as well as the spokesperson for the SNP, the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson).

Consistent attention to this issue is absolutely crucial, because as we have heard today, simply investigating and responding in a reactive way to each incident in an isolated fashion is not, and will never be, good enough. I regret to say that these issues have been and are systemic, and not just in the aid sector, among international aid agencies, or among private sector contractors working in international development or peacekeeping. They are systemic in all contexts where vulnerable people exist and, crucially, where there are power imbalances, not least gender-based power imbalances, imbalances that exist between donors and recipients, or those that exist between so-called protectors and the people they are supposed to be protecting.

This is a crucial point because, as many of the Members who have spoken today have said, we have to recognise that predators and abusers actively seek out the vulnerable, and usually manipulate and take advantage of such systemic, specific power imbalances. We know this from decades of our own experiences, domestically as well as internationally. Whether in parts of the Church, among celebrities, in sport, in the media or with looked-after children, we have seen those tactics used to find and exploit victims. It is absolutely right, as has been done, to highlight environments of conflict, extreme poverty and distress as particularly vulnerable environments with vulnerable individuals, and I have seen those myself around the world.

I think of one of the first visits I paid to Malawi when working in the NGO sector, when I went to a World Food Programme feeding station that was responding to food shortages in southern Malawi. I was 25 years old. I was taken to a village where hundreds of people were queuing up to receive their assistance from the WFP, yet they had to wait for their food while I was sat on a chair, in front of everybody else sitting in the dust, for me to give a speech. I was taken aback by that, but unfortunately it is the culture that exists: me as a 25-year-old white man, sitting there on a chair while other people sat in the dust, waiting for their food. In those first experiences, it was clear to me how such a situation can turn into one where there is abuse, imbalance and misuse of power.

The resolute and consistent cross-party action of the International Development Committee in pursuing these issues underpins the Committee’s value and why, in scrutinising our official development assistance, our role in these matters is crucial. I hope the Committee or one similar will continue to scrutinise our official development assistance budget. I urge the Minister to consider that point, which has had support from across the House.

I have seen NGOs, peacekeepers and others do huge good around the world but, I am sorry to say, this is not the first time I have had to speak on these issues. As a former staff member of Oxfam and World Vision, I was utterly horrified by what I heard was happening in Haiti. At the time, I said:

“I completely share the horror and revulsion about the revelations…I feel let down. I know that many current Oxfam staff members feel completely let down, too, both by the actions of those who carried out these terrible incidents and by the failure to deal with them”.—[Official Report, 20 February 2018; Vol. 636, c. 53.]

That is absolutely crucial.

Some years later, I was horrified to hear of another example. I will not read out the name of the individual at the heart of the allegations in Haiti, not least because I cannot pronounce it, but also because he does not need his name repeated. I spoke to a former civil servant for the Department for International Development, who said that that man was well known throughout the sector and had moved from agency to agency before ending up in that situation with Oxfam.

That is a tragedy, because organisations mentioned today such as World Vision have led work internationally on these matters. One of the first issues I worked with them on was tackling the loophole that allowed paedophiles to travel to south-east Asia to abuse children. World Vision did incredible work on that, so it is a great tragedy for me that some of the organisations that have led in the fight to protect vulnerable people find these problems in their own organisations.

We have heard many excellent contributions and recommendations today, which I wholeheartedly endorse on behalf of the official Opposition. I hope the Minister will explain what progress has been made on working globally with others to implement the recommendations that the Committee has made in its several reports, not least in the light of new allegations in relation to the DRC.

I want to highlight a particular recommendation that the IDC made in its report. We cannot have platitudes, as the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire said. It is simply not good enough. The Committee said:

“Whilst we recognise the value of developing best practice guidance and ensuring that it is widely available, we learned from our initial SEA inquiry that the existence of good guidance is only valuable to the extent that it is followed in practice.”

The Committee also warned:

“Voluntary self-regulation of safeguarding standards allows failures on sexual exploitation and abuse to slip through the cracks: in our view the case for an independent ombudsman remains strong.”

I want to highlight another area from the IDC report, which said:

“Protection for whistle-blowers should form part of all frameworks for reporting sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment of both beneficiaries and staff.”

Insufficient attention is being given to these issues. The protection of whistleblowers and the freedom of people to come forward and speak out on these issues is crucial. I wonder how the Minister will respond to those key points.

The New Humanitarian and Thomson Reuters Foundation recently exposed shocking reports regarding the DRC. They have horrified hon. Members across the House. The investigation was released in September and refers to 51 women who have accused aid workers of sexual exploitation and abuse during the Ebola response in the DRC. Organisations involved, allegedly, include the World Health Organisation, World Vision, UNICEF, the Alliance for International Medical Action, Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières and the International Organization for Migration.

Many of those accounts were backed up by aid agency drivers and local NGO workers, exposing multiple incidents of alleged abuse. Given the number and similarity of the accounts from the women in the eastern city of Beni—one of the epicentres of Ebola—it is likely that the abuse was widespread, but the investigation only focused on Beni. We have to accept that in these situations we are not getting the full picture of what has been going on.

I do not need to further detail the stories, which have already been mentioned, of women being plied with drinks, ambushed in offices and hospitals, some being locked in rooms by men who promised jobs or threatened to fire them if they did not comply, and, of course, forced pregnancies as a result of abuse. It is absolutely extraordinary. Men from countries including Belgium, Burkina Faso, Canada, Côte d’Ivoire, France and Guinea were named as abusers. Many women were afraid to come forward and speak out about their experiences.

With the shadow International Development Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), I wrote to the agencies implicated in that response. I am sorry to say that we have not heard back from many of them, but I commend Oxfam and World Vision for responding very robustly and rapidly. Oxfam pointed out in particular that it has now joined the inter-agency misconduct disclosure scheme, which aims to highlight perpetrators. But again I have to ask: is that working? We see these platitudes in these letters; we see these warm words. What is the reality on the ground? These examples keep happening again and again. We asked some extremely tough questions and we will continue to do so.

Oxfam also pointed out research that it was doing that had uncovered a range of aspects that prevent people from coming forward. It pointed out the issues of people not being willing to speak in certain country contexts, preferences about the way to report incidents and so on. I am not sure that that needs research. A lot of it is absolute common sense and blatantly obvious to anybody who has looked at these examples. We need to see less dilly-dallying and dithering by agencies. We need to see action on the ground, and the Government need to be supporting that.

I have some questions for the Minister, not least about the response of the FCDO itself. People may think that the issue is just aid agencies, peacekeepers or others, but unfortunately Governments and international agencies are also involved. Therefore, although we welcome the change to the new FCDO terms and conditions and human resources policies to ensure that sexual relationships between staff and beneficiaries and partners are considered unacceptable and will be treated as potential gross misconduct by the FCDO, can the Minster explain who is included within that category of staff and whether the same treatment will be applied to all staff who are contracted to Departments that are spending UK official development assistance? Is the FCDO providing adequate funding to ensure that safeguarding is at the heart of our ODA programmes with agencies, contractors and multilateral agencies?

Then there is armed forces training. The Minister will know that we give a lot of support to, for example, peacekeepers. Will he explain what is happening on that and how we are ensuring adherence to the highest standards in those we are training? Given that there needs to be co-ordination, will he also explain how the Government are looking at monitoring individuals as they move between organisations? That is one of the crucial issues that have come to light.

In conclusion, we must accept that there is a systemic problem. We have to drive systemic and cultural change within organisations in the sector and ensure that there is prevention, not just reaction.

[The Minister for the Middle East and North Africa (James Cleverly)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) not just for securing this debate, but for having been a passionate voice in this area for a considerable time, and long before this issue was in the broader public consciousness. I will go through some of the UK Government’s actions, but I think that one reason why we find ourselves in a leadership position on this is that there have been voices such as my hon. Friend’s, which have been making this case for far longer than others.

I pay tribute also to the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for her chairmanship of the Select Committee and to the members of that Committee, who have pursued with alacrity this incredibly important issue.

I thank all those hon. Members who have made contributions today. We all joke about how Westminster Hall is a much better debating place than the main Chamber of the House of Commons, but with this debate it has been shown once again that, sometimes, difficult and challenging questions can be asked in good faith, with a desire to bring about positive change, rather than just as a short-term political stick to beat each other with across the aisle. I will respond as much as I can to the points that have been made.

Sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment are completely unacceptable, especially in a sector whose purpose is to help the most vulnerable. My concern sometimes is that these stories are used by critics of ODA spending as an excuse for the UK to withdraw from its international commitments. I will say this clearly: no, it is a reason for us to work harder to address these issues rather than to step away from them.

In 2018, the aid sector’s failure to tackle sexual exploitation came into sharp relief, and it has been raised by a number of people today. We now realise—indeed, it is very clear—that it was far from an isolated incident. That has been reinforced today. The hon. Member for Rotherham highlighted the pernicious cocktail of attitudes that are, unfortunately, if not prevalent, then certainly not isolated in the aid sector, and that lead some people to believe that the people they are meant to be helping are somehow lesser than them.

The case is therefore clear: we must do more to drive up safeguarding standards, and we must act quickly. Inevitably, there will be a power and wealth imbalance in the sector that we are talking about, but we must never accept the inevitability that that should lead to sexual exploitation and abuse.

Since 2018, the UK has spearheaded work to tackle sexual misconduct in the aid sector. We launched a £10 million multi-year initiative with Interpol to identify and stop perpetrators from working in the sector and, with a UK commitment of £10 million, we developed tools to help organisations with their safeguarding. The misconduct disclosure scheme, backed by the UK, prevented at least 36 people with track records of sexual misconduct from being employed by NGOs in 2019. Following wide consultation, we have designed a new multi-million-pound programme of support to survivors and victims. We will provide further details in 2021.

Yet cases still occur far too frequently, as we have seen in the horrific reports from the DRC, and the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) is absolutely right that we have to assume that that is just the tip of the iceberg. Reporting has increased—which perversely, I suppose, is a positive sign. We know that there has been, as is often the case with sexual abuse, huge under-reporting, both domestically and internationally.

Tackling sexual misconduct is a priority for the UK Government. In September, we published our first aid sector safeguarding strategy. The UK is pushing for change in three areas. First is sector-wide change. The UK is providing global leadership to tackle the issue from the top. The Prime Minister is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Circle of Leadership to prevent and end sexual exploitation and abuse. The UK brings together donors, NGOs, the United Nations and others to ensure a coherent international approach. We adhere to global standards on sexual misconduct and require our partners to do the same. In 2019, we helped to write and signed the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s recommendations on the issue, with 29 other DAC members.

Organisational change within the UK Government is our second priority; that means a comprehensive look at our own cultures and practices. We have sent a clear message out to all staff that safeguarding is a responsibility for everybody, and we hope that will alleviate the challenge of where victims have to report to their abusers. At the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, that includes a clear statement in our staff code of conduct that sexual exploitation and abuse based on power imbalances, including paying for sex—my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire is absolutely right; I will not describe that as prostitution, because that is not what it is: it is abuse—is gross misconduct. All ODA-spending Departments have signed up to that language.

Thirdly, we want to raise standards among those who deliver UK programmes overseas. We have strengthened our due diligence assessments and aligned the safeguarding language in our multilateral funding agreements with other donors, clearly setting out our collective expectations. Reaching our standards can be a challenge for some small grass-roots organisations, so the UK has created the resource and support hub to help build up their safeguarding capabilities. Some might argue that we are not tough enough and should cut funding to all organisations where any allegations occur. Our concern is that that would introduce a perverse incentive to cover up the very issues that we need to see more of.

[Stephen Doughty]

Does that apply to all staff in all Departments spending ODA and all those contracted to those Departments? That is important.

[James Cleverly]

On the language that I used about gross misconduct, the t’s and c’s of the FCDO can apply only to the FCDO, but all ODA-spending Government Departments have agreed with the wording underpinning that. All Departments signed up to the language in the UK strategy. It is about trying to ensure that we do not introduce perverse incentives that would drive the issue back underground, as we have seen before.

Regrettably, safeguarding cases will still occur from time to time. However, we collectively work to reduce the risk, and we will not tolerate a lack of effort or action. That is why we require our partners to do all they reasonably can to prevent sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment and to respond sensitively to the victims and robustly within organisations. We will not fund partners who do not reach those standards.

Let me end by saying that more needs to be done. Sadly, we have heard that this issue will be an enduring challenge, and the UK will remain at the forefront. We will place the rights, needs and wishes of victims and survivors and the centre of our response. The UK strategy sets out four commitments for all Departments delivering UK aid: we will continue to provide global leadership; we will hold ourselves to the same high standards that we expect of others; we will transform the aid sector so that everybody is treated with dignity and respect; and we will hold ourselves to account through transparent reporting and external scrutiny. Safeguarding against sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment is everybody’s responsibility, and the Government will continue to lead the way on this issue.