Duty of care and sexual violence in the humanitarian community
When a member of staff is subjected to sexual violence, the organisation's obligations run on two tracks at once. The one that is usually neglected is the employment track.
The protection response is the one organisations plan for. Move the person, secure their accommodation, arrange medical care, consider whether the police can be involved. All of that matters and none of it is the whole of the obligation.
The employment track is different. It concerns the person's position as an employee: their contract, their posting, their career, and the terms on which they continue to work. This is where organisations most often fail, and they fail in ways that are visible to every other member of staff.
Four failures recur.
The survivor is moved and the person accused is not. The operational logic is that the survivor is the one who needs protection, and moving them is the fastest way to provide it. The consequence is that the person who reported pays the cost of the report, and everyone watching learns not to report.
Support ends with the contract. Medical and psychological care is arranged for the duration of the deployment. Where the contract was short, or where the incident hastens its end, the support stops at the point it is most needed.
The investigation becomes the person's problem. The survivor is asked to repeat their account to several people, to give evidence in a process they did not ask for, and to keep the matter confidential while colleagues speculate. An investigation is necessary; the way it is run determines whether the person recovers or is harmed again.
Nothing is recorded as a security incident. Because the case is filed under safeguarding or human resources, it never appears in the security data. The organisation therefore cannot see that it has a pattern, and cannot change the conditions that produced it.
The corrective is not complicated. One route in, so the person does not have to categorise what happened to them before they can report it. A decision about relocation taken with the survivor rather than about them. Support that continues while it is needed. And a record that reaches both the safeguarding file and the security analysis, so that the organisation can see what is happening to its staff.
Practical guidance and research on the security of humanitarian staff, for the organisations that send them.