Haiti is demanding Oxfam identify its aid workers who paid possibly underage sex workers in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, so they can be prosecuted, and has said it is considering legal action against the charity.
Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s ambassador to the UK, said on Monday the country was “shocked and appalled” by the way Oxfam allowed the senior workers in question to leave the country without reporting them to the Haitian authorities.
“For the executive to know these crimes were committed and to allow those people to leave without informing the authorities is wrong,” he told the Guardian.
“We might be dealing with a paedophile ring. It was a crime. Prostitution is illegal and we believe they may have been underage kids.”
Haiti called on Oxfam and the British government to identify the people involved so they could be prosecuted “in the international system”. On Sunday, Oxfam’s chief executive, Mark Goldring, claimed the charity did not report its workers to Haitian police because it feared this would endanger the women involved.
But Edmond described this as “wrong and really insulting”.
“How do they know the women would have been endangered?” he said. “Oxfam should recognise they failed and showed a lack of leadership.”
Legal action against Oxfam was also being considered, Edmond said. “We will be very firm with them in terms of action to correct this,” he said, adding that any course of action would be decided by the legal authorities in Port-au-Prince.
The comments came before a meeting on Monday between Goldring and the UK’s international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, who over the weekend threatened to remove Oxfam’s £34m annual state funding unless she was convinced the charity’s bosses had shown sufficient “moral leadership”.
Oxfam is also braced for an impact on donations from the public after days of escalating stories about the conduct of its workers.
Any hopes the charity’s leadership had that the scandal might quickly subside were dashed when it was reported in the Observer that Oxfam staff in Chad had also paid sex workers and when Oxfam’s annual report resurfaced, showing it dealt with 87 allegations of sexual abuse by staff in 2016-17.
It emerged on Monday that Oxfam managers were concerned about the behaviour of two of the men who were involved in the Haiti scandal while they were working in Chad.
An internal document about Roland Van Hauwermeiren, who later became the Haiti director, reported by the Times, said “recruitment [process] identified some weaknesses in his management (eg gender issues)“. It reportedly asked: “Were sufficient checks put in place to monitor this?”
Further documents showed Van Hauwermeiren handled at least four complaints of sexual harassment or misconduct against another worker but allowed him to stay in his job, the newspaper reported. The concerns included the use of sex workers and sexual harassment of female colleagues. The two were among seven men dismissed or allowed to resign by Oxfam in 2011, following allegations including paying sex workers.
“We are shocked and dismayed about the latest revelations from Chad,” said an Oxfam spokesperson. “While we can’t corroborate the information at the moment it highlights again unacceptable behaviour by a small number of people and the need for a sector-wide approach to tackle the problem.”
Goldring said he would emphasise to Mordaunt Oxfam’s contrition and the changes it had made.
“I’m going to explain the improvements Oxfam has made,” Goldring said before the meeting. “I’m going to repeat, as I have done to the British public, Oxfam’s apologies for those events.”
He said he would explain the proposed changes that the charity’s chair of trustees, Caroline Thomson, laid out on Sunday. The measures included a new whistleblowing procedure and stronger vetting for staff.
Goldring said if funding were cut by the UK government, Oxfam would “carry on delivering as best we can, because that’s what the people of Yemen, Syria, Congo and indeed Haiti need and deserve”.
Source: The Guardian
