Paper details

Paper authors	Melanie Sauter
In panel on	Can Standards and Reforms Drive Effective Change?
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Sexual violence against humanitarian aid workers is an increasing concern for the humanitarian community. Most incidents take place between colleagues from the same organisation or staff from different agencies. This makes the issue an inter-agency problem, which calls for a broader solution. Even if one organisation implements exemplary policies that deal with the prevention of sexual violence in its workplace, its staff is not protected from perpetrators working for other agencies.

This paper first shows why there is a sexual violence problem among aid workers. The machoid culture paired with mismanagement of incidents by employers foster a culture of impunity. This claim will be underlined with a content analysis on the base of witness testimonies of survivors of sexual violence in the aid sector. It proceeds with laying out the obstacles survivors of sexual violence from the humanitarian community typically face in relation to international state-centric law. The final section explains why humanitarian organizations should be obliged to adopt more tangible prevention and follow-up mechanisms for survivors based on the Beijing Platform of Action framework. The paper concludes with recommendations for the humanitarian community and policy makers on how to improve this situation.

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