In The Wake Of Oxfam, Has ‘Humanitarian Aid’ Become A Euphemism For Oppression?

by Elizabeth Vos, Disobedient Media:

The latest Oxfam sex abuse scandal does not exist in a vacuum. It is not the first time that aid groups have been accused of sexual misconduct towards the very people the entities purport to protect, and without significant change, it will not be the last time that such allegations emerge. The current debacle began with the revelation of sexual abuses by Oxfam’s Country Director in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake devastated the island nation. The allegations eventually led to the expulsion and banning of Oxfam Great Britain from the country.

Reuters reports that Oxfam’s former country director in Haiti, Roland Van Hauwermeiren, admitted to using prostitutes at his residence during a relief mission before resigning in 2011. CNN wrote that Oxfam had published an internal report acknowledging that three staff members also “physically threatened and intimidated” a witness during an internal investigation into the issue. The New York Times discussed Haiti’s decision to ban Oxfam Great Britain from operating in the country. 

Additionally, a UNICEF consultant and child rights activist recently pled guilty to raping a child under 16, raising further questions about the essential nature of charity work. Any discussion of Oxfam or Newell’s misconduct must recognize the history in which such scandals are situated.

Such abuses have proven all-too-pervasive over the preceding decades, with Disobedient Media’s William Craddick, breaking coverage of the Clintons’ efforts on behalf of Laura Silsby. Craddick reported on Silsby’s illegal attempt to traffic Haitian children in the aftermath of the same 2010 earthquake that has become the setting of the Oxfam debacle, as well as the Clintons’ apparent efforts to intercede on Silsby’s behalf.

Many other independent voices have reported allegations of severe impropriety in the Clinton’s conduct in Haiti, especially in reference to the infamous Clinton Foundation.

In April last year, Disobedient Media also wrote regarding historical abuses tied to the United Nations, noting that the U.N. has faced accusations of sex crimes for decades, ranging from rape and abuse of women and minors in war zones to participation in human trafficking, prostitution and even production of child pornography involving senior U.N. officials and members of foreign governments.

Additionally, Disobedient Media described allegations of child and organ trafficking that emerged in the aftermath of disasters in locations including Haiti, Chad and the Balkans. This author’s report on the matter ultimately queried: “…If this is what was caught, what abuses are occurring that we do not catch?” In light of the latest series of abuse allegations, the unfortunate answer appears to be, “far too much.”

The question as to whether minors were also sexually abused by Oxfam staff remains open-ended. Oxfam’s 2011 report indicated that: “None of the initial allegations concerning fraud, nepotism, or use of underage prostitutes was substantiated during the investigation, although it cannot be ruled out that any of the prostitutes were under-aged.” In all, seven Oxfam employees have been terminated in relation to the incident. ABC News reported allegations that some of the prostitutes involved with Oxfam staff were minors.

This is not the first time that a member of Oxfam would be swept up in a highly publicized sex abuse scandal. British press reports indicate that Caroline Thomas, who became Chair of Oxfam in 2016, previously served as an executive at BBC during the emergence of the Jimmy Saville sexual abuse fiasco that deeply tarnished the reputation of the BBC.

Some press reports imply that abuses perpetrated by Oxfam staff were much worse than what was officially documented in the now-public 2011 report, citing age of those involved as a particular concern. That abuses against minors cannot be confirmed or denied in the case is disconcerting, considering well-documented sexual abuses of children in Haiti by UN peacekeepers and others. 

Since the scandal’s emergence, Oxfam has faced the cessation of financial support from thousands of individual donors and even public funds. The Associated Press reports that: “British government… suspended new funding to Oxfam’s British affiliate. Oxfam Great Britain received 31.7 million pounds ($43.8 million) from the government in the 12 months through March 31, 2017, or about 8 percent of its revenue.”

Amira Malik Miller, a Swiss humanitarian aid worker, came forward in the wake of the Oxfam furor, discussing abuses tied to Roland Van Hauwermeiren with Hardtalk. Miller described witnessing abuses in Liberia in 2004 while working for a British charity, Merlin, where Roland Van Hauwermeiren served as the Country Director. Despite Miller having lodged an official complaint with the charity, Van Hauwermeiren was able to gain employment with other aid groups before finally being exposed in relation to abuses in Haiti while working for Oxfam.

Roland Van Hauwermeiren’s ability to easily gain employment with successive aid groups after Miller’s 2004 complaint suggest a troubling degree of leniency towards sexual abuse in aid work.

Although the current outrage and funding cuts may lead to increased accountability for Oxfam, it does nothing to address the larger problems posed by an amorphous industry of aid groups. If an ample supply of tax-payer funding continues, absent any drastic transparency or accountability measures, the same abuses will inevitably continue ad infinitum.

The heart of the problem is that non-governmental organizations are by definition unaccountable to the public that funds them and impervious to those they ‘serve,’ as humanitarian groups operate amongst devastated populations with near impunity. For Peacekeepers and those affiliated with the United Nations, diplomatic immunity prevents the tiniest a shred of accountability, even in cases of the most heinous sex crimes.

That Oxfam and similar organizations receive sizable government funding while unaccountable to the public represents an existential problem for all NGO’s, charities, and “humanitarian” efforts. As the situation stands, a total lack of transparency creates an environment ripe for abuses of the worst kind.

Oxfam was not the only humanitarian organization to be implicated in recent weeks. The Guardian wrote that Mercy Corp and other charities were also linked to Haitian case, writing that a spokeswoman for Mercy Corps had confirmed the involvement of an individual who worked for Mercy Corp between July 2015 to November 2016.’

The European press reports noted that this was not the first time Mercy Corp had been associated with sex abuse accusations, writing: “A similar but separate issue surfaced last year after Mercy Corps, another EU-funded NGO, publicly announced that it was investigating allegations of sexual misconduct by two of its staff on the Greek island of Lesbos.”

Disobedient Media previously reported on the involvement of Mercy Corp and other groups in Haiti, in an article covering special interest-tied micro-finance and reinsurance groups that used the devastating cholera outbreak caused by UN peacekeepers to profit. The piece noted that groups who appear for all intents and purposes to be aimed at “aiding” Haitians reaped a sizable profit from the instigation of “microloans” and “reinsurance programs,” descending on the Haitian populous before basic sanitation had been instigated.

This author’s previous report explained that microfinancers and re-insurers involved in Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake and the secondary cholera epidemic included Swiss Re, Fonkoze, and Mercy Corp, all of whom partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative to create the Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organization (MiCRO). Mercy Corp is Chaired by Linda A. Mason, who also co-founded Bright Horizons, a large child care organization that has previously operated in Haiti with Mercy Corp.

Despite describing itself as a tax-exempt 501(c) charity, Mercy Corp runs a microfinance portfolio including 1,351,511 disbursed loans worth over $1.40 billion, with total assets worth $435.3 million. It seems remarkable that a tax-exempt charity would also found a number of banks, including Bank Andara, Asian Credit Fund, the Agency for Finance in Kosovo, IMON International, Kompanion Financial Group LLC, Partner Microcredit Organization, XacBank and Mercy Corp Northwest.

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