"Go Tell Your Manager": Sexual Harassment in Aid Agencies

Published February 02, 2009 @ 09:03AM PT

A continuing series of rants about sexual exploitation and abuse of power in the humanitarian world, submitted by a friend working at a large NGO - a friend who has requested anonymity, and asked to go by the nom de guerre 'Relief from Relief'.

So, without further ado, Relief from Relief on Sexual Harassment in Humanitarian Agencies:

It’s the dirty little secret of humanitarian agencies in the field that not every humanitarian worker is Mother Theresa. Heck, not even Mother Theresa is Mother Theresa if Christopher Hitchens and some of my friends who have worked in India are to be believed!

In 2002, in Sierra Leone there were widespread reports of humanitarian workers trading food for sex. In 2006, in Liberia, there were more allegations.

And who knows what our friends at Zoe’s Ark who “rescued” Chadian children disguised as Darfuri orphans were up to.

Donors such as the US government have started requiring that their aid be tied to making sure that there are “codes of conduct” in place and there have been initiatives to “build safer organizations”. But when you step outside of the headquarters and out of the spin zone of reports to donors and the UN, what do you see? You see organizations that are unwilling to even take the smallest steps to protect their own employees from each other.

What should be one of the basic protections in war zones (we take care of our own) is something that is belittled, minimized, and shorted when it comes to implementation.

Most female aid workers have heard the stories warning her about certain “grabby” coworkers. At a recent training I attended, female coworkers unwound by trading stories of attempted rape and sexual harassment from their country managers after nights out dancing and drinking at bars. Often the refrain from the woman was – “I made a mistake in going out drinking with him but everyone had warned me so I couldn’t say I didn’t know.”

When I spoke about this with a male coworker about it, he said – but our women are tough. I can’t imagine anyone of them not telling the guy to piss off (despite the fact that one of the stories involved a head of mission banging on the door of the young woman all night and trying to break into her bedroom).

When I mentioned that the guy had been with the organization for over ten years and that the idealistic young woman was on her very first mission, he still didn’t get it. I tried to explain to him how weird and awkward it feels when someone who is supposed to be one of the good guys does that shit to you, the first thing you do is wonder if you provoked it and read the situation wrong.

So go tell your manager, is the refrain. In my NGO, we’re told to solve the problems ourselves and then put it in writing if you can’t. But the guy was her manager. What then???

It all seems to come down to sex – and confusing sexual harassment with consensual sex. European NGOs seem particularly reluctant to “moralize” to their employees because they are not “prudes” like the US. They seem to say - we don’t want to regulate what you do with your sex life. But its so cloudy when you live and work together – particularly when it comes to remote areas when there is little opportunity to socialize with others and when you are forbidden to socialize with the locals due to strict security regulations.

Click here to read Part 2.

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Comments (4)

it's happening here at home to one of our most vunerable population;female inpatients @ psychiatric hospitals.last fall we put up a national tracking survey to quantify former inpatient expiriences. early results are 25% "lack of privacy", 5%-10% for "sexual abuse".both the victem & system are overwhelmingly silent. better reporting procedures & personnel screening are required

Posted by don fitch on 02/07/2009 @ 07:27AM PT
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"So go tell your manager, is the refrain." Oh, PLEASE. I have talked to so many international women who wouldn't dare, for fear of their career, and so many local women who wouldn't dare, for fear of the loss of their honor.
My own story: I went to an international manager when I was being sexually-harassed in Afghanistan by a fellow international manager, who said, "Oh, but that's just the way so-and-so is. He doesn't mean anything by it!" And by "it", I mean lots of touches on the shoulder, getting way too close when talking, telling me how beautiful my eyes were when I was asking for statistics regarding his projects for a report, leering at me whenever I was in his office... all things that are not only creepy *anywhere*, but completely inappropriate in an Afghan workplace! The manager was desperate to not talk about it. When I then went to a certain international HR manager for help, I got a speech about how conditions in the field are tough and it's up to me not to be too "inviting," how I needed to think about what was best for the office, not just myself, etc. Realizing the official channels weren't going to work, but not feeling threatened enough to leave, I went to the unofficial channels: I talked to every expat woman in the place, and found out Mr. Creepy targeted all international non-Islamic women in this way. We worked out a system where we ensured that we would never, ever be alone with him anywhere (car, office, lunch, whatever). We also let the local Afghan women know of our problems, and they rallied around us, making sure we were never alone with Mr. Creepy. And the local Afghan HR manager was awesome (yes, there are most certainly Afghan gentlemen out there!), making sure no security arrangements ever put us in a car with the guy alone. Altogether, the experience made me never want to smile at any male-coworkers in the field, never share a meal with them, never share a laugh, etc. Very sad.
I broached this subject on the AidWorkers Network in 2007:
http://www.aidworkers.net/?q=node/833

Posted by Jayne Cravens on 02/07/2009 @ 09:40AM PT
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While we are talking about sexual harassment by humanitarian NGO's, we should not ignore sexual harassment in our own military abroad. My friend's granddaughter who volunteered for the National Guard was harassed by her commanding officer. Her formal complaints were ignored and she was subject to harassment for reporting the offenses. The effects on her were devastating and she went AWOL before her scheduled second tour in Iraq and later was convicted by a court martial. Unlike Vietnam, where our collaborators recruited and provided sex workers or "comfort women" to our soldiers, our collaborators in the middle east are unwilling to do this, motivating some male officers to put pressure on young female recruits to provide these services. Some possible solutions would be to penalize official cover-ups, create an official sex-worker corps in the military or move our nation- building industry out of the middle east and into a more sex friendly region.

Posted by Paco Despacio on 02/08/2009 @ 04:31PM PT
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I highly doubt that the solution is provide another means of sex such as a sex-worker corps, etc.

"Comfort women" tend to be, frankly, raped. All you have to do is listen to the stories of comfort women during WWII.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case in Vietnam.

The idea of sex as a "service" is repugnant.

Even more so is that we excuse this kind of behavior from our men because they "need" it.

Posted by Begona Saiz on 02/10/2009 @ 10:11AM PT
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