Introduction

In 2001, Asmita Naik, co- author of this chapter, was part of a team of staff from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Save the Children which unexpectedly uncovered allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of refugee children by aid workers in West Africa (UNHCR and Save the Children UK, 2001). The allegations spanned several refugee camps, hundreds of miles apart, in three countries: Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. The scale was truly shocking: some 70 perpetrators and 40 aid agencies were implicated, and 40 child victims were identified. It involved the most egregious abuses, including humanitarian workers demanding sex from children in exchange for desperately needed aid supplies, such as biscuits, soap and medicine. Nearly two decades later, despite efforts to prevent and ensure accountability for sexual misconduct, it was revealed that in 2011 survivors of the Haiti earthquake had been sexually exploited by Oxfam staff. Moreover, not only were the perpetrators from Oxfam not held properly accountable, they were in fact supported to transition to jobs elsewhere in the sector (O’Neill and Haddou, 2018). This was followed in quick succession by allegations engulfing multiple organizations in the aid sector, including Save the Children, UNAIDS, the United Nations Population Fund, UN Women, Medicines Sans Frontieres, Plan International, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development and the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Protecting recipients of aid from harm caused by aid workers goes to the heart of the ethical responsibility in the aid sector; after all, unless organizations can apply core humanitarian values and human rights principles to their own conduct, how can they hold other actors to account for their behaviour? For a sector that is so dependent on its moral authority to carry out its work (Westendorf, 2020: 110–11), acknowledging and tackling aid worker abuses with integrity is not only the right course of action, but essential to the sector's maintenance of public perceptions of its legitimacy.

However, long- time observers of the aid sector's efforts to manage SEA in aid operations have watched the scandals of recent years with a strong sense of deja vu and increasing disillusionment.