“Sexual exploitation and abuse: why pick on charities?”

[Mike Aaronson]

Since February this year, when the story about Oxfam workers in Haiti paying for sex hit the headlines, there has been a frenzy of media stories about sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector. I have felt sorry for Oxfam, as I know they take these matters seriously and I didn’t think they deserved the treatment they received. But the sense of righteous indignation was so intense (fanned by who knows what agendas – the story certainly wasn’t just about Oxfam) that it was very hard if not impossible for anyone to offer a counter-narrative. Things then got worse as the story surfaced about sexual harrassment claims involving senior managers at SC UK and how they had been handled. I am sure I was not alone among our alumni to feel let down and demoralised that this could happen in the organisation in which I believed passionately. I also knew from my coaching work at SC UK just how devastating this was for the people working there – especially when the organisation decided to suspend applying for DFID grants until the Charity Commission had completed its Statutory Inquiry into what had happened.

Meanwhile the IDSC had launched its investigation and on 31 July published its report. I thought this was a good piece of work, although a bit tough on Oxfam. SC UK among others was able to submit its evidence, much of which is visible in the Committee’s report. If you read what they wrote it is obvious that we were in the absolute vanguard of addressing the problem across the sector as a whole. So this seemed like a good opportunity to try to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy that this was all the fault of the charities – as you would have thought, for example, if you read the BBC’s coverage on the day the report was published – so I decided to write a piece using the IDSC report as a peg. I have my own blog https://blogs.surrey.ac.uk/politics/category/mike-aaronson/ but I thought my piece would have more impact if I got someone else to publish it. I contacted Mike Edwards, former Head of Research in the old Overseas Department in the 1990s, who now edits ‘Transformation’, a site that is part of ‘Open Democracy’. He agreed to take it and was enormously helpful as an Editor. After a number of iterations the article appeared on 7 August. It seems to have landed quite well and a number of people have thanked me for doing it. I just hope it will contribute to a more reasoned discussion from now on – and also that it brings some comfort to our people, who really don’t deserve to have had this all foisted upon them.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, you can find the article here:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/mike-aaronson/sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-why-pick-on-charities?utm_source=Transformation&utm_campaign=b32728fe25-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9f93c95423-b32728fe25-408104613

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