April 20, 2021 — Nothing is more heartbreaking than the exploitation and abuse of vulnerable persons by aid staff. The humanitarian and development sector is rightly under scrutiny to ensure the highest standards possible in how it delivers its services. The IRC welcomes the attention and light that is being shed on issues of safeguarding in the sector. Safeguarding is the responsibility of all humanitarian and development organisations to make sure their staff, operations, and programmes do no harm to children and vulnerable adults, and that they do not expose them to the risk of harm and abuse.
The allegations that have come through the media recently and in the past years have clearly shown that this is a systemic issue across the entire humanitarian and development sector. A single case of abuse and exploitation by a humanitarian aid worker is unacceptable and undermines all good acts done in the delivery of aid.
The sector must do better for its staff and clients. Any organisation that claims to have no safeguarding violations is not living in the real world. This is no time for complacency, nor is it the time for taking action at only an HQ or surface level.
Our commitment to zero-tolerance regarding safeguarding
The IRC is strongly committed to creating a culture of zero-tolerance for inaction when it comes to safeguarding. Our work, which is concentrated in the most demanding places in the world with some of the most vulnerable people in the world, means that our commitments to safeguarding staff and clients are doubly important.
We are determined to protect our clients and staff from all forms of abuse and exploitation through our prevention efforts, and where misconduct is alleged, to address it without fear or favour.
The IRC takes reports of exploitation and abuse very seriously and has been working to highlight the additional risks to women and girls and to strengthen our internal systems and ways of working to make sure our clients are safe. We are working with the populations we serve to put in place multiple reporting channels to encourage the reporting of cases of abuse and exploitation. We know though that, for many reasons including shame, stigma and fear of retaliation, many survivors do not report abuse, and that cases are widely underreported. We cannot rely on just survivors bearing the burden of reporting their experiences, and if we do not shift our focus to prevention vulnerable persons will continue to experience exploitation and abuse.
To this end, the IRC focuses on prevention through clear standards and expected behaviours communicated to staff in a minimum of 17 different languages and holds regular mandatory training on safeguarding. We have strengthened our recruitment practices to reduce the risk of hiring known or potential perpetrators of exploitation and abuse. We are focused on contextualised approaches to communicating standards and leadership on safeguarding. We are highly engaged with our peers across the humanitarian and development sector on how we can all, collectively, do better, do more, and learn from each other’s experiences in preventing and responding in more survivor-centred ways to reports of exploitation and abuse.
The whole humanitarian and development sector needs to combat issues of safeguarding
Safeguarding violations are systemic to the entire humanitarian and development sector, and this demands we work as a collective to ensure that those who would cause harm have no place in the humanitarian and development sector. It is particularly important to build trust with our clients. At IRC, we have seen growth in our clients’ trust in the organisation as a result of the appointment of two safeguarding leads to each local office, supported by a growing Safeguarding Unit. We have been able to successfully test new approaches to strengthening our engagement with clients in places like Tanzania, which included the production of client-led communications materials and reporting mechanisms. We will continue to learn how to strengthen our prevention and response measures, by working with clients, host communities, local staff, and local partners to build a truly bottom-up approach to safeguarding that works for those it's meant to protect.
This is a tremendously important issue and we know that there is more work to be done. We must constantly work to improve our systems to ensure our staff and clients are safe, treated with respect, dignity, and humanity, and free from all forms of exploitation and abuse. The IRC is committed to these ongoing efforts in coordination and collaboration with those most directly affected - our clients and staff.