A challenging journey: from systems change to culture change

The IASC Championship was established in 2011 to provide political leadership at the highest level on the issue of preventing sexual exploitation and abuse, with a more recent extension to cover the harassment that is often an enabler of abuse. Since then, the post has been held by four UN chief executives, William Swing (2011–2017), Henrietta Fore (2017–2019), Filippo Grandi (2019–2020) and Natalia Kanem (2021–2022).

The 2021 IASC External Review of Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment This global review provides an independent assessment of progress since the IASC Review of PSEA in 2010 and considers the impact and effectiveness of the IASC approach to PSEAH. identified the critical importance of ‘a sustained focus on changing the culture of the humanitarian sector’. In February 2022 the IASC Principals agreed that one of our Championship priorities would focus on culture change, specifically ‘ensuring that the sector actively evidences a zero-tolerance approach for inaction on SEA’. Building up to this formal prioritisation, in November 2021 the SCHR convened a small group of SCHR and IASC Principals to challenge each other to go radically further on preventing sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment.

The meeting was not about the progress the sector has made, which is significant, but about how we could further challenge ourselves as leaders in terms of changing the culture of the humanitarian sector to dramatically improve the prevention of abuse in the sector. This article explores one of those critical shifts: our assumptions about abuse and the practical ways we, as humanitarian leaders, can counter these assumptions.

The Inter-Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme facilitates the sharing of misconduct data between employers in compliance with data protection and privacy laws and without a central database. Since it was set up by SCHR in 2019, it has prevented the hiring of 144 known abusers by humanitarian organisations.

However, we believe that it is possible to go much further. We think that, with many of the systems in place, we now need to step up our investment in the much harder job of changing our underlying culture, the customary beliefs and social norms of our sector that guide how we work in crisis situations around the world.

What’s the problem?

A key, though inadvertent, flaw in our approaches to date has been a collective reliance on victims/survivors, overwhelmingly women, to drive accountability. Despite being some of the least powerful individuals in humanitarian contexts, we have expected them to not only survive abuse, but also to report what they have experienced or witnessed.

Those that choose to do so have to take the difficult step of formally reporting to our organisations or to local authorities, despite us knowing that, even with recent improvements in reporting mechanisms, the barriers to reporting remain daunting, as are the potential risks of doing so.

As a result, we know that reports represent only the tip of the iceberg, and that most cases of exploitation and abuse, like other forms of gender-based violence, go unreported. Palermo, Tia et al. “Tip of the iceberg: reporting and gender-based violence in developing countries.” American journal of epidemiology vol. 179,5 (2014): 602-12. doi:10.1093/aje/kwt295 This feeds into a humanitarian culture which, despite increasing awareness that abuse happens – a big step forward from two decades ago – still sees abuse as rare and exceptional.

Too often, humanitarians assume abuse is not happening unless we have reports to the contrary. This justifies a minimal level of preventive action, particularly when humanitarian organisations are stretched to deliver lifesaving aid across multiple crises. In the past, such relative inaction has been justified by the low number of abuse reports received globally, and the tiny number that received substantial media coverage.

However, to drive the culture change that we think necessary, we collectively need to recognise that abuse is, sadly, universal. It happens in every society, from the most to the least developed. In times of war, displacement and disaster, the extreme gender and power imbalances between those receiving and providing aid make it extremely likely that it will occur in large humanitarian responses.

Driving a shift in perceptions

Given the global prevalence of gender-based violence, with 35% or at least one in three women experiencing physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, we can safely infer that sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment is happening in our sector and organisations, even if we have limited or no reports. Even in a stable environment with strong rule of law, more than 80% of sexual offences are never reported to authorities, so it’s unlikely in the extreme that they aren’t happening where women are compelled to rely on aid workers for life’s essentials.

Acknowledging that we’ve made erroneous assumptions about abuse in the past provides us with an opportunity. If we are open with ourselves and others about the reality – and in recent months humanitarian leaders have been, particularly with regard to the Ukraine response – we no longer make the mistaken assumption that no reports means everything is fine. Making this leap means we can’t take the stance that responding to reports received is enough. We must err on the side of safety and assume that no reports is an issue in itself, and not a good indicator.  

This is important, because it lifts the burden of triggering action from victims/survivors – those least able to and most at risk – to humanitarian organisations, their leaders and staff – those with the most power to prevent abuse.

This supports a genuine move to the system-wide safeguarding culture that we seek, and multiplies the impact of the systems and policy actions that have already been put in place. It’s what zero tolerance to inaction could look like in practice. The implication is that inaction is never acceptable, because we’re starting from a point where we understand that, without proactive efforts, abuse will be occurring.

This doesn’t mean we’re assuming this is inevitable, or that we can’t do anything about it. The important thing is to make it clear that these wrongs are not the behaviour of ‘bad apples’, but are systemic and inevitable unless the root causes are addressed both by managers and the wider staff body.

Informed by this mindset shift, we can then tackle the why, and address it: if abuse is happening, why isn’t it reported and what can we do to encourage reporting? Underreporting may be caused by a number of factors, including a lack of appropriate complaints mechanisms and knowledge of available services, fear of retaliation, a culture of impunity or stereotypical attitudes to survivors within law enforcement or courts. 

Learning from experience

In 2021, World Vision International conducted a lessons learned process to identify strengths and areas for improvement in safeguarding, particularly in programmes located in fragile contexts or during emergency responses. Discussions focused on leadership, prevention, risk mitigation, reporting, proactive detection of violations and response to allegations. The most significant lesson that came out of this process is on the need to address underreporting, and how to do so.

In order to increase reporting the sector needs to do two things proactively: 

Build a humanitarian system-wide safeguarding culture and address staff behaviour  

Leaders must regularly and repeatedly share and reinforce messaging from the top that the organisation has a culture and policy of zero tolerance for any form of sexual misconduct, sexual harassment or sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), and considers it unacceptable behaviour at any level. 

Organisations must promote awareness among leaders that increased reporting is a sign that systems are working, and reward it when it happens. We must combat the mistaken belief that reporting is a bad sign in order to support strong, level-headed crisis and incident management. One option is to conduct ‘Safeguarding Awareness Weeks’ and other leadership-led conversations at regular intervals, including when senior leadership team members and safeguarding focal points visit field offices. Leaders must remember to emphasise the need to report even unconfirmed information. In World Vision’s experience, when Country Directors speak often and repeatedly about zero tolerance and celebrate and acknowledge reporting, more reporting will occur.

Even with this in place, however, it is likely that the number of reports humanitarians get will still not accurately reflect the reality of abuse.

Prevention + Action

Even once we have a culture that acknowledges the realities of abuse, reports will still be important because they move us from a general awareness that abuse is happening, to a specific awareness – where, to who and by whom. To prompt reporting of possible past incidents and determine barriers to reporting, a multi-disciplinary approach and engagement is needed.

Leaders, accountability and monitoring and evaluation teams, along with safeguarding specialists, should flag instances of little or no reporting to determine whether the organisation should conduct proactive targeted enquiries to detect and enable reporting of safeguarding violations. They should identify and collaborate with survivor-focused partners and service providers to conduct detection outreach and so enable communities to report safeguarding violations, and support managers to identify ‘moments’ in the programme cycle for proactive detection and discussion on safeguarding violations.

Humanitarians must expand the role of gender-balanced, field-facing and community engagement teams, including monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning, to include safeguarding detection, such as posing specific safeguarding questions during focus group discussions (FGDs) with the community that can elicit reporting. The purpose is to normalise discussions of safeguarding, underline zero tolerance policies and promote use of confidential complaints mechanisms. In World Vision’s experience, FGDs with local women’s groups and faith leaders have proved to be a critical entry point for additional confidential reporting in high-risk environments.

It is also essential to introduce ‘spot checks’ during field visits (e.g. by calling in test complaints to ensure systems are working, and by discussing with community leaders their understanding of SEA and how to report it) to ensure fulfilment of safeguarding focal point and field responsibilities. While organisational policy states zero tolerance and senior leaders in organisations such as World Vision are dealing with staff that do abuse community members, staff or beneficiaries, spot-checks help ensure that weak systems and abuse are detected at any level.

Country teams should set up and/or participate in interagency teams that proactively engage the community, talk about safeguarding and (in safe, gendered and appropriate ways) ask if violations took place. Some organisations, particularly local women’s organisations, will be more trusted than others, and interagency work can build on these strengths. Managers should request safeguarding ‘peer reviews’ or ‘health checks’ of programming from third parties (e.g. local women’s groups, health clusters, protection clusters, GBV clusters, PSEA networks, faith leaders and government ministries).

Conclusion

Collectively, aid leaders and humanitarians have made, and are making, good progress on instituting policies, systems and procedures (such as the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme, ClearCheck, Organisational Safeguarding policies, reporting and complaints management systems and Codes of Conduct) and on requiring and measuring compliance against them.

These are essential, but not sufficient, for us to get ahead of the problem.

This article has covered just one of several shifts that humanitarian leaders have acknowledged need to be tackled and offers leaders and practitioners practical solutions in order to address under-reporting. While not the subject of this article, accountability must follow. Following robust investigations and adherence to due process, perpetrators must lose their jobs and if appropriate be prosecuted when abuse or exploitation occurs.

Most recently, in the Ukraine conflict response, despite no public cases of abuse by aid workers being reported, high-level leaders from the UN and NGOs, under the auspices of the IASC and UNHCR, have already met in Geneva to review risks and identify actions, and speak regularly with frontline coordinators in the response.

Moving forward, humanitarians must (1) assume that, even with safeguards in place, abuse will continue to happen; (2) that underreporting exists; and (3) implement vigorous and proactive prevention and detection. These three actions will be key to establishing a culture of zero tolerance to inaction. Changing culture is not an easy task but, guided by the experience of victims/survivors and affected people, it’s one we need to rise to.

Andrew Morley is the president and CEO of World Vision International, Chair of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR), and the current Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Prevention of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment Champion.