Sexual Harassment in Humanitarian Agencies, Part 2

Published February 03, 2009 @ 07:15AM 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'.

To read the first part of the post on sexual harassment, see here.

Sure there’s lots of consensual sex. And there are plenty of humanitarian workers wondering what strings they need to pull to get into that setting because they haven’t seen anyone but an old German WatSan engineer for the past 9 months. (Nothing personal, old German WatSan engineers.)

Its not just lecherous men abusing helpless innocent girls on their first mission either. In headquarters, the rhetoric seems to be around training our national staff not to take girlfriends in the field with the racist overtones that African (and Asian and Latino) men can’t seem to keep it in their pants and must find wives while they are away from home.

Drivers in NGOs will tell you stories of both male and female Western (i.e. white) aid workers running around outside of bars with prostitutes and various unsavory types. Drivers see it all. At a gender-based violence training, I heard about all the male program managers running off to have sex with the prostitutes at the bars. Another friend told me about a guy who she had to share a house with bringing home different 15 year old girls every night and not knowing what or how to talk about it with him.

One coworker of mine was despairing because she had to deal with a female expatriate who was keen to have a mixed race baby so was sleeping with the drivers in Haiti. Another seemed to be trying to sleep her way through all the male national staff.

Women are also just as happy to solicit prostitutes as the men. Read Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures for a refreshingly candid look at this phenomenon. So everyone is sleeping with everyone else. And somewhere in there, people are being abused, pressured, and even raped.

Don’t rape your co-workers. It’s a pretty simple rule. None of us were drafted against our will into these organizations. Don’t want to deal with rules about your personal behavior? Don’t go to work there. Most corporations in the US have laws and policies designed to protect the secretary from the boss chasing her around the copy machine at the office Xmas party.

Yet working in a humanitarian agency is sometimes like joining the world’s biggest dating service. People hook up and break up at a breakneck speed in the field. At a work gathering one night, someone told an amusing story about a beloved coworker who when he was asked to implement the new code of conduct rules, he adamantly refused. “This is my sex!” he roared, “you can’t take away my sex from me!” Everyone laughed.

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Comments (7)

In the life that we, aidworkers, live, it is difficult to find a partner who understands what we do, why we do it. Plus, we rotate so often it is difficult to find that firm base to build a relationship on. Add to that, finding a partner that can cope with the nomadic life style, starting all over again every 2, 3, 4 years as we rotate through duty stations... No wonder so many get into trouble. And this is (without being sexist), this is much more a challenge for female aidworkers than for man (I wrote a post about it: http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2007/09/rumble-i-am-aid-worker-and-woman-help.html

Even for those of us who have a relationship, it is difficult to keep that relationship going, especially when living in non-family duty stations. How can a relationship survive living apart for 10 months per year?

It is true that in the aid 'business', there is a very "lively" dating scene. To me, mostly young people, in search of the true one, or those who gave up and become the "celibatair eternel". (or celibataire eternelle).

This is very different from sexual harassment, or harassment as a whole. As aidworkers, we have come to help. While not every aid worker is a humanitarian at heart, still we stand for certain values, as representatives of our organisation.

It is a must that aid organisations stress this, educate their employees, and on top of that, have properly established 'ombudsman' and 'hotlines' where wrong-doings can be reported confidentially, and where complaints are acted upon.

Be it sexual harassment, or any harassment for that matter, miss-use of power, embezzlement, bribing etc.. In all of that, as aidworkers, we should be "more catholic than the pope".

On the down side, I have found that accusations of sexual abuse or harassment are often a weapon of disgruntled employees. Filing a complaint often gets a co-worker or manager into trouble, and if ill-founded, will remain a blame and a shade on him or her for ever. A very sensitive issue.

Posted by Peter Casier on 02/03/2009 @ 03:26PM PT
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When I was at a large OSCE field mission, the security staff (all locals) really leveled with new inductees. "If someone does something to you, it will likely be a fellow expat who forgot the rules or had too much to drink," we were told. A series of appalling stories was repeated just to make sure we got the point.

They were dead-on, too. The one time I had to call security to my residence was when a fellow expat who had consumed what should have been a fatal amount of whiskey decided to assault me, threaten a local male friend, and ransack my flat.

In another job, where I worked with refugees resettled in the US, the line between professional and personal relationships was very blurred. Almost everyone in the office was dating a colleague (because who else do you meet when you work 70-100 hrs per week?), or a former client. The latter gave me pause, though I should mention that they were indeed *former* clients in every case. All of this was made more complicated by the fact that former clients often became co-workers. I met my current boyfriend when he was an on-call interpreter for the agency, and he, too, was a former client.

Complicated stuff.

Posted by Transitionl... . on 02/03/2009 @ 03:45PM PT
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I met my current boyfriend when he was an on-call interpreter for the agency, and he, too, was a former client.

I should have added "of the agency" at the end of that last sentence. He was never my client!

Posted by Transitionl... . on 02/03/2009 @ 03:47PM PT
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Re: "Emergency Sex."

Both Heidi and Ken annoyed the crap out of me for most of that book, though Heidi more so, which was disappointing given that hers is probably the most famous experience of a female aid worker.

Posted by Transitionl... . on 02/03/2009 @ 03:57PM PT
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I'm not sure what the point of this was. Harassment and abuse are obviously things to put an end to. The people who have 'hooked up,' or seen sex workers, or otherwise engaged in adult consensual behaviors ...so what? Rev. Bookburn - Radio Volta

Posted by Rev Bookburn on 02/03/2009 @ 07:03PM PT
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Rev. Bookburn, Many of the sex workers are not there out of pure consent (see some of the human trafficking posts on this site) and many many of the sex workers in areas where humanitarian workers are come from extremely impoversihed areas and are often "beneficiaries" themselves. There is a difference between sexual harassment and adult consensual behaviour but the sex workers issue is prohibited for a reason in most organizations.

Posted by Sarah Martin on 02/04/2009 @ 12:43AM PT
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I read this article because it came to me as an embedded link in my Change.org weekly update. To the best of my knowledge, the point of the articles is to get people thinking creatively and profoundly about how to change US policy in light of injustices, needs, etc. That being said, I don't see how this blog entry fits into that category.

The accounts of sexual exploitation--both because their frequency and their details--are appaling. However, I don't see how this entry from "Relief from Relief" seeks to change any of that. Perhaps we are still in the early awareness-raising stage or I have misjudged the tone of the article. At some points I really felt as if the article was militating against the project's success. The bloggers seemed to side the with "Europeans" and their desire to resist the tendency to "moralize" like "Puritancial" Americans do. I agree with Sarah's comment that even "consensual" sex is not as straightforward as it may appear, especially when involving sex workers. Condoning participation in the sex industry cultivates the mentality that people can gratify their sexual desires whenever they have the urge. When a prostitute is not "available," a coworker is often around.

Even the bloggers unequivocal statement "Do not rape your coworkers. It's as simple as that," reads as somewhat infantilizing. If it were as easy as saying that, we wouldn't be in this situation. The "blurred lines" that are not identified as problems or aggravating factors and the anecdotal ending of the entry worry me very much.

Posted by Alison Stiner on 02/06/2009 @ 09:40AM PT
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