After Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders also admits: “From us 24 cases of abuse, 19 operators already fired”
Of Fausto Biloslavo
And now it turns out that even the tough and pure MSF, Doctors Without Borders, they have bad apples at home, who were guilty of sexual harassment and abuse.
Only last year did the powerful NGO register 24 red light cases, largely among staff members. It is not excluded, but, which also concern local personnel employed in a war or emergency zone. Not only that: MSF admits that two cases directly involve victims "i.e. patients or members of the community" where Doctors Without Borders intervene. The big NGO doesn't have such a straight back, who brings the migrants from the boats into our homes by refusing to sign the Viminale code of conduct and denounces the rapes in the detention centers in Libya as if it were Italy's fault.
In the 2017 Msf, which has 40 thousand employees, received 146 complaints regarding abuses of power and sexual harassment. A minimum number, but relating only to last year. Still a flaw for those who make the humanitarian spirit a moral imperative and ask for money, especially to private individuals, in the name of an upright reputation even if a little’ Taliban as in the specific reception of migrants. «Forty cases were identified as abuse or harassment in general emerging from internal investigations and 24 of them of a sexual nature" explains MSF in a statement. Nineteen unidentified people, not even with their nationality or for the countries or projects where they had sex with donors' money, they were fired. «We do not tolerate any physical or psychological abuse against individuals, sexual harassment, relationships with minors or behavior by our staff that exploits the vulnerability of others, nor employees who take advantage of their position for personal gain" thunders MSF. But it sounds a little’ tragicomic that Doctors Without Borders boast of "transparency" in having independently disseminated the data, of just one year. The Paris headquarters did so following the Oxfam scandal, which is expanding. Before being called into question for the iceberg of sexual scandals linked to NGOs, which is emerging from a sea of ​​silences and covers. And it would be better if the names of the fired "humanitarians" also came out, at least in the NGO circuit, otherwise sensational cases like that of the Belgian Roland Van Hauwermeiren will be repeated. The Times of London discovered that the head of the Oxfam mission in Haiti after the earthquake of 2010, where he organized "Caligula-style orgies" with donors' money, he had been shown the door by another NGO four years earlier. In Liberia he used Merlin drivers to lure young girls and take them to the headquarters of the humanitarian organization. After Haiti and his "honorable" dismissal, he managed to work again in Bangladesh with a French NGO. According to the British press he was hired because Oxfam did not report the case. On the contrary, for the director of Oxfam Italia, Roberto Barbieri, had "provided false references", That, if so, no one checked.
Yesterday the British actress resigned as Oxfam "ambassador"., Minnie Driver. He wrote on Twitter: “All I can say about these horrific revelations is that I am devastated for the women used by the people sent there to help them.”. And a new shadow has appeared. Lan Market, responsible for Oxfam's missions abroad, revealed to the BBC that between 2009 e 2013 There have been other reports of sexual abuse by aid workers in Bangladesh, Nepal and Philippines. In most cases the NGO has not made them public, preferring to wash dirty clothes at home.
Source: http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/se-molestie-sono-umanitarie-crolla-mito-unaltra-ong-1494660.html