A guest post by Angela Bruce-Raeburn
Me Too has come for our aid industry much the same way that it has exploded in other sectors. The recent scandal of Oxfam in Haiti is not a new one, in fact, it occurred about seven years ago in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 Haitian people and shattered the lives of millions more.
The revival of the scandal points to what was essentially a cover up by Oxfam of the fact that several expatriate staff – including the country director at the time, Roland Van Hauwermeiren – engaged in sexual misconduct and impropriety that included exploitation of young, poor women as sex workers in a house leased by Oxfam. After the scandal broke in 2011, Van Hauwermeiren resigned and moved on to another position of power as the Country Director in Bangladesh for Action Contre Faim, another international aid agency.
Over the past few days, Oxfam funding has been threatened and other humanitarian organizations are scrambling to clean their own house as they wait for the other shoe to drop. But threatening funding will not prevent this behavior in the future, nor will it change the culture of impunity that exists in these organizations. Before we have yet another knee jerk response to a highly complex issue, we need to first understand and then break down the privilege accorded to expatriates that are not granted to “local” staff and people living in the countries where aid agencies operate.
The reality of development work is that we meet people at their most vulnerable, and perhaps in the most undignified circumstances. Some are homeless, unemployed, survivors of violence, hungry, and unable to provide the most basic necessities for themselves or their families. In post disaster or post conflict environments, women are the most impacted by these catastrophic events because they are the main caretakers of the family. They are sole bread-winners; they are more than likely the ones who have to walk long distances to find food and water for their families and these circumstances increase their burden, making them more susceptible to exploitation.
The development community descends upon a country after a disaster. And we come bearing gifts – food, a tent to cover your children at night, water, or maybe a cash for work program that will allow you to work to earn small sums of money. As bearers of these gifts, we raise the banner of the international community – the mark of legitimacy, assistance, and protection.
Yet the astounding lack of diversity in the field has enabled mainly white men to ascend to positions of leadership. The country offices – like the one in Haiti – are kingdoms unto themselves, where the country director, who is more times than not white, male, European or American, is the king. The leadership of country offices often reflect the make up of the organization’s headquarters, not the country itself, with lower positions filled by local people. Interaction with headquarters is almost entirely about monitoring the program on the ground, checking all of the boxes to make sure that donors are satisfied.
The unfortunate reality is that the role of the country offices is almost never about the care of the local staff, or quite frankly their rights. Do people in these offices, especially at the lower levels, really believe that they can speak out? Are they subjected to the same rules that demonstrate fairness and equity with expatriate staff? In many cases, they are not. Local staff remain silent when faced with allegations of misconduct, impropriety, abuse, and unfair treatment because NGO jobs are highly sought after and difficult to come by.
It is no doubt that Oxfam is a well-respected organization with dedicated people. However this incident must not shield Oxfam’s leadership from the rotten truth. For too long Oxfam has talked the talk, but not walked the walk. Almost every research paper produced by international NGOs spout the same rhetoric about local governance and local leadership, but it is not worth the paper it is written on. The meta-narrative permeating development continues to rest on a notion that local people and governments are extremely corrupt, and therefore not able to be trusted stewards of development funds. Moreover, the white savior in leadership is here to guide and protect local people from themselves.
What happens next
Oxfam must not only hire qualified people with the right academic credentials or language expertise, but they must also seek to ensure a pool of diverse candidates from which to choose. Diversity is not only about gender or race, but it must include life experience and emotional intelligence. International organizations like Oxfam must stop pretending that diversity is a binary choice between qualified white males and un-qualified minorities. The time is now to make diversity hires a priority, especially in the country offices.
Beyond a “hotline” for reporting, Oxfam should consider developing a more robust mechanism like an ombudsman or an independent office that can operate as a bridge between the headquarters and country offices. Local staff must have access to a space to share challenges and also to talk about misconduct and impropriety without fear of reprisal.
Since the resurgence of this scandal, I have been thinking about what could have been done differently especially in light of #AidToo. Could I have offered a deeper dive into the realities of the country context? However, I am not convinced that this would have been a useful exercise without the buy-in and commitment to face unpleasant truths. At the end of the day, I don’t believe that the international development and humanitarian community have, first, the vocabulary, and second, the willingness necessary to develop a substantive agenda on the intersection of race, power relations, gender, the role of expatriates versus local staff, and history of the particular country.
These discussions did not and could not happen in 2011 because there has been an automatic rejection of talks about race and equity in development. No one wants to speak out about how local people are marginalized, or about why they are not often in leadership in the country offices other than to trot out the tired old trope that they are not as qualified as their white counterparts coming from the donor countries.
In my almost three years advising on humanitarian intervention at Oxfam America, I always heard NGO leaders say that we were in the country to help to “Build Haiti Back Better,” and that NGOs must “work themselves out of a job.” It’s been eight years since the earthquake; I cannot imagine that there is anyone who worked in Haiti at that time who believes that real progress has been made.
That’s even truer for exploited and vulnerable women who have suffered even more under people who were supposed to help and protect them.
Angela Bruce-Raeburn is the former Senior Policy Advisor for the Humanitarian Response in Haiti at Oxfam America from 2010-2013.
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Being in the third world space I’m appalled ? with this Oxfam scandal. I have read and re-read the post (article), it is evident that the savior (messiah) mentality engulfs those who are beneficiaries of #aid they find themselves bending over even in blatant violations of their integrity. How are we pushing human rights and then take advantage of humans, whose rights are pushing? I’ve always wondered how with giants like Oxfam in Haiti we are not seeing any difference? We need to give the power to the people. The issue of Europeans or Americans being qualified to lead in our space should be done on a transitional basis not on a permanent basis. We have qualified and equally capable individuals who can lead, but then issue is maybe the “Fox” is considered smarter than the “chicken?” This doesn’t mean we don’t have our own foxes this side, but you just don’t expect such violations and abuses from power houses known for pushing the rights agenda. There’s wisdom combined and resilience that we need to tap into in third world communities. We also need to consider building the capacity of Western philanthropist on how to? Our intent is to make sure that there is an understanding that human beings are human irrespective of which side of the globe they live and most of all it doesn’t matter the calamity they face now or they’ve faced before, they remain #humanbeings who must be regarded as such.
There is a need for more than diversity away from white male saviour types, with a fundamental shift in the culture and perception that “charities and NGOs” are good by default per se and to believe otherwise is to tread on holy sacred ground. That has been the position of the Charity Commission as I can testify when it sided with Trustees against beneficiaries in not ordering an independent audit to go ahead after they felt that they had not received all benefits promised. The Commission regards itself as the friend of charities more than their regulator. I have always advised but so far no donor has agreed for there to be random unannounced inspections in all projects by genuine independent experts, and not the usual bunch of evaluators who are drawn from within the same comfortable inner circles. Another is the entire process of due diligence checks that can and should be done. A colleague and I circulated a working paper to all interested parties. No-one showed any interest!
Excellent commentary and insights — thank you Angela and others! I would strongly recommend reading “When Helping Hurts’ by Rich Stearns. I work with a non profit who has worked alongside, elevated and honored the indigenous leaders of their countries and we are celebrating 75 years of serving those leaders — we have learned abundantly from them. ‘They’ are capable and ‘we’ are ‘Westernized’ in our thinking and approach — we must defer to their knowledge and expertise. Haiti is a product of our creation on many levels — one of the most dependent societies we have incapacitated because of our need to ‘help!’ It took our partner there nearly a month for the Haitians to think of a way that they can help themselves and work toward self sustainability. What does that tell you?
I think it’s also worth looking at diversity at all levels in an organization, as this seems to diminish the farther up the organigram you go. I’ve worked with many fine people from diverse backgrounds along the way in my career, but still the upper echelons of power seem to be dominated by older white men. A purposeful shift at the top could result in better diversity representation at all levels.
Thanks for all the comments. @Linda Poteat – exactly on point. There is diversity at the organizational level but my point was exactly what you said – at the leadership level it tends to be dominated by older white males. I have gotten a lot of comments rejecting that premise which I expected. I feel that we do not have the “vocabulary” for this discussion as I said in the blog and that’s because we can’t get out our own heads – we are “do gooders” and the idea that we are not doing as well as we believe is difficult.
@Susan – yes you are correct. Haiti is a creation of racist bad policy for decades. Haitians know what is best for them and we need to get out of their way.
I am exactly the appearance of the older white male and saviour type but learned very early on in my overseas development career that we were not the best-suited for the various tasks. Once you accept others are better-suited, you build the team around you – not only staff but more so the leaderships of the beneficiaries. I have always developed and employed the self-help group model of development, and no doubt women’s groups work better than men’s or mixed groups. Blending in to the background and having proper exit-plans does reduce your profile and makes you obselete – and that is the nub of the problem. Too many (including white women), often in company with peers, bask in the do-gooder gift-bearing status. For some it goes to their heads; taking advantage for their own ends, and then it’s addictive, they perpetuate their own existence. You will not be suprised to come across inner-circles of diplomats; development administrators and evaluators, mutual appreciation societies, on the local conference cocktail circuits. https://anorthumbrianabroad.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/built-in-obsolescence.html