CAIRO (AP) — In the wake of an internal survey that detailed multiple allegations of rape and sexual harassment of its female staffers, the leader of the World Food Program is vowing to go after abusers.
David Beasley, the U.N. agency’s executive director, said in a recent interview with the Associated Press that he is “making hard choices to bring change” to the WFP.
“If we have a claim of rape by anyone in the WFP, if we can substantiate, I can’t begin to tell you how aggressive” actions will be, he told the AP in a phone interview from the agency’s Rome headquarters.
The warning comes after an internal survey which Beasley commissioned found at least 28 employees said they experienced rape or sexual assaults while working at the agency. More than 640 others said they were victims of or witnessed sexual harassment, or 8 percent of the total sample of 8,137. The survey was first reported last month by the Italian Insider.
The findings are lower than the U.N. Safe Space Survey, which was conducted across the world body’s agencies and was published in January. Of its more than 30,000 respondents, 38.7 percent said they experienced sexual harassment while working in the U.N.
Over the past year, Beasley said the agency fired and banned five staffers implicated in sexual abuses, doubled the number of its investigators, lifted the time limit on reporting abuses, and is spreading the message among staffers to speak up about abuses of power.
Some advocates and WFP employees question whether the agency had the ability to adequately investigate itself. The two staffers spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
“They love PR, but in reality nothing changes,” said one female employee who filed a sexual harassment report in one of the agency’s regional offices this year. She said it was largely ignored and was never investigated.
She also said harassers are typically forced to resign, not fired, allowing them to seek employment with other U.N. agencies. She said her agency recently hired an official accused of harassment at the World Health Organization.
A second senior official at WFP ticked off a list of names of officials at the agency’s regional offices he said have been accused of sexual abuses but remained in their positions because they were protected by managers.
“When managers are powerful, they become like mafias,” he said.
Paula Donovan, a former U.N. employee who founded the Code Blue Campaign, which seeks to end impunity for sexual offenders in the U.N. system, called the 28 cases of rape and sexual assault “shocking and disgusting.”
Donovan said the U.N. has a conflict of interest. “We are the employer of the accused and the accuser,” she said, calling for an independent body from outside the U.N. to investigate.
“You can double, triple the number of investigators,” she said. “But as long the results are handled internally and turned over to other biased individuals to make judgments and final decisions, none are real changes.”
Sexual abuses are rife especially in remote areas away from the spotlight.
Local employees in other international agencies operating in Yemen complain senior officials have free rein to exploit female staffers. The staffers said women are also prevented from speaking out against sexual abuses by broader cultural and social restraints in Yemen, where women who complain of harassment often face punishment.
A senior female employee at one non-U.N. group said, “the strong majority of Yemeni women working for international agencies suffer silently from sexual harassment.”
The United Nations has been in the spotlight for several years over allegations of child rape and other sexual abuses by its peacekeepers, especially those based in Central African Republic and Congo.
According to U.N. figures, there were 80 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse involving peacekeepers and 65 allegations involving U.N. civilian staff in 2016 — an increase from 2015, according to the most recent data.
In 2017, new allegations were leveled against several agencies, including the UNHCR, the refugee agency, which helps more than 22 million people. Other allegations of misconduct involved civilians working for the U.N.’s International Office for Migration, and one with the children’s agency UNICEF.