Liberia, Guinea & Sierra Leone
Sexual exploitation of child refugees not unexpected

afrol News, 1 March - By Jeff Drumtra, US Committee for Refugees

Refugee children and internally displaced youth in West Africa suffer widespread sexual abuse at the hands of local aid workers, peacekeeping soldiers, refugee leaders, and sometimes their own families, according to an investigation published this week by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Save the Children Federation/United Kingdom.

The report, "Sexual Violence and Exploitation: The Experience of Refugee Children in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone," concludes that "sexual violence and exploitation of children appears to be extensive" among uprooted children. An estimated 1.1 million people in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea still live in refugee camps and displacement sites after 12 years of civil wars and insurgencies that have spilled back and forth across international borders and still rage today in some locations.

The US Committee for Refugees (USCR) is appalled by the findings detailed in the new report and credits both UNHCR and Save the Children for their forthright investigation and the agencies' decision to release the report publicly rather than treat the problem as an internal matter. The report states that local aid workers employed by more than 40 international and local relief agencies "were reportedly the most frequent sex exploiters of children, often using the very humanitarian aid and services intended to benefit the refugee population as a tool of exploitation."

The study explores the most common types of sexual exploitation, examines the primary reasons behind the problem, and profiles the worst perpetrators. The report also details the consequences suffered by victims and lists recommendations to reduce sexual exploitation of the region's uprooted children. 

Based on its own ten site visits to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea during the past 12 years to assess first-hand the protection and humanitarian needs of refugees and displaced families, the US Committee for Refugees believes that the egregious problem of sexual exploitation of uprooted minors has numerous underlying causes in West Africa that must be discussed candidly if policymakers and relief officials hope to address the issue effectively.

Unfortunately, there is blame all around: 

1 - Poor Management by UNHCR 
UNHCR's program in Guinea during the 1990s was mismanaged, disorganized, poorly staffed, and accommodated corruption by local officials and some aid workers.

UNHCR failed for 12 years to conduct a reasonably accurate census of the refugee population that the agency was responsible for assisting and protecting. The agency poorly monitored its own programs and neglected to crack down firmly on diversions of relief items and local exploitation of aid projects during much of the 1990s, creating an environment in which pervasive exploitation of young refugees became a natural next step.

The agency's international headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland often chose to cover up problems in Guinea during most of the 1990s rather than take meaningful action to address them. The agency rarely held its top officials accountable for their own mismanagement. Only recently has UNHCR begun to take halting steps toward reform of its Guinea program - often without proper financial support from international donors.

2 - Insufficient UNHCR Protection Staff 
The new report on sexual exploitation of West African refugees states that "there are inadequate mechanisms for reporting abuses available to refugees, and little prospect of doing so in a way that is safe and confidential."

UNHCR protection officers are charged with monitoring the protection needs of refugees, including protection problems of refugee minors victimized by sexual exploitation. Yet the size of UNHCR's protection staff in West Africa, and throughout the African continent, has long been woefully inadequate.

At the peak of the refugee crisis in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, UNHCR deployed fewer than ten protection officers to monitor 700,000 refugees and returnees. It is a ratio that UNHCR and its donors simply would not have tolerated in other regions of the world. The disparity between aid for African refugees compared to other regions is an ethical failure by UNHCR and the international community for which refugees have paid dearly, as the newest charges of sexual exploitation indicate.

The shortage of UNHCR protection officers is caused by budget constraints imposed by donors as well as by the negligence of UNHCR headquarters officials in Switzerland who have failed for years to take aggressive steps to resolve this particular problem in Africa.

USCR has regularly warned UNHCR, the US State Department, and the US Congress about the need to double or triple the number of UNHCR protection staff in Africa. "A shameful disparity exists between the level of refugee protection in most parts of the world in contrast to virtually nonexistent protection for refugees in many African countries," USCR reported nearly three years ago.

USCR warned in 1999 that "poor funding and inadequate budget appeals have short-changed the protection needs of Liberian refugees. UNHCR/Liberia is unable to monitor appropriately the safety of hundreds of thousands of returnees. UNHCR/Guinea and UNHCR/Côte d'Ivoire are unable to respond as needed to charges of worsening harassment against refugees."

USCR urged UNHCR three years ago to seek special funding to "immediately triple its protection staff" in West Africa. UNHCR failed to do so, although the US State Department's refugee program offered additional monies for the effort. Nearly two years ago, USCR repeated its warning to policymakers that "hundreds of thousands of African refugees have virtually no access to UNHCR protection officers."

3 - Artificially Low Budget Requests by UNHCR 
UNHCR is shamefully complicit in its own funding problem. The agency regularly submits inadequate budget requests to international donor nations, all but inviting mediocre programs that fall far short of meeting refugees' actual needs.

Artificially low budget requests have damaged the morale of UNHCR staff in the field, particularly those trying to improve programs and conduct the type of proper monitoring sorely needed in West Africa.

UNHCR is repeating this misguided practice in 2002. Despite continued refugee flows from Liberia, difficult refugee repatriation programs in Sierra Leone, and challenging obstacles to refugee relief in Guinea, UNHCR has actually cut its budget request for those three countries by US$ 15 million this year - a reduction that makes no sense on the ground.

UNHCR has fallen into a trap of deliberately low-balling its budget in order to please tight-fisted international donors. The US government, to its credit, has privately urged UNHCR to issue larger budget requests that accurately reflect refugees' real needs. UNHCR has failed to do this, essentially turning its back on the misery caused by poor funding and curtailed aid programs. 

4 - Poor Refugee Funding by International Donor Nations 
International donor countries usually fail to give full funding even to the artificially low budget requests put forth by UNHCR. This creates a double hardship on refugees and the programs meant to aid and protect them.

Historically, refugee assistance in West Africa has been particularly poorly funded. UNHCR expenditures throughout Africa fell US$ 11 million short of budgeted needs last year, and were tens of millions of dollars less than required to address refugee needs that the agency's austerity budget failed to include. UNHCR's worldwide programs suffered a US$ 39 million funding shortfall last year, excluding well-funded, high-profile programs for Afghan refugees.

The funding shortfall translates into under-staffing, inadequate aid, and poor oversight at refugee camps: precisely the environment that has allowed sexual exploitation of refugee minors to flourish in West Africa. The report by UNHCR and Save the Children/United Kingdom points out that "the lack of senior and international staff presence in the [refugee] camps was reportedly allowing junior agency staff to behave with impunity."

5 - Refugees' Self-Sufficiency Versus Continued Aid 
The "Sexual Violence and Exploitation" report points out that young refugee girls are vulnerable to sexual exploitation as they seek money to help feed and clothe themselves and pay for health care and education. Some refugee parents actively "encouraged their daughters to engage in [sexual] activities to bring an income into the family," the report states.

Humanitarian aid workers in West Africa have struggled during the past ten years to achieve a proper balance between providing aid for refugee families and encouraging those same refugee families to become economically self-sufficient. It is a genuinely difficult balance. UNHCR and the World Food Program (WFP) clashed repeatedly during the 1990s over disagreements about whether particular refugee groups in West Africa were capable of supporting themselves.

In some parts of West Africa, UNHCR and the WFP - pressured by international donor countries - have prematurely cut refugee families from beneficiary rolls before they are fully able to support themselves. Some refugees respond by adopting desperate measures to survive. Efforts to procure farm land for refugee populations have met mixed success.

The problem of sexual exploitation will not seriously diminish unless aid agencies and donors redouble their efforts to measure the degree of refugees' self-sufficiency more accurately, based on refugees' needs rather than the needs of donors. The report by UNHCR and Save the Children/United Kingdom wisely recommends such a review. 

"Sexual exploitation cannot be addressed without providing alternative means and opportunities for earning an income," the report concludes.

6 - Exploitation of Refugees by Refugee Leaders 
Refugee leaders typically play key roles in helping inform refugees of their rights and conveying refugees' concerns to international aid workers and government officials. But refugee populations in West Africa have regularly been betrayed by their own leaders, who are often self-appointed, corrupt, and almost exclusively male.

Refugee leaders in the region have long exploited their own people, orchestrated food diversion schemes, and sabotaged aid workers' efforts to conduct an accurate headcount of the refugee population. Aid programs that rely heavily on refugee leaders for information and implementation are flawed from the beginning - a fact commonly known for years to relief workers on the ground in West Africa.

The new report's finding that some refugee leaders participate in sexual exploitation of refugee minors is sad, but not surprising. Any solution to the problem cannot safely depend on refugee leaders to report future abuses to authorities.

7 -Social Deterioration Caused by 12 Years of War 
The people of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and to a lesser extent Guinea, have suffered through 12 years of war and its insidious effect on society. Refugees and other citizens of the region have regularly told USCR over the years of their deep despair about deteriorating social values, disintegration of families, and loss of parental control over their own children - all caused by more than a decade of upheaval and atrocities.

People in Liberia and Sierra Leone express sadness and a sense of foreboding about the breakdown of traditional customs, the lack of basic services previously taken for granted, and their feeling of abandonment. Many confide privately that a sense of hopelessness permeates their lives even when fighting ceases. Many Liberians and Sierra Leoneans believe that their lives and their society are in regression. Sexual exploitation of minors is, at least in part, an outgrowth of this extreme social disintegration.

The international community should provide generous support to rehabilitate and redevelop Sierra Leone as it now moves to solidify its newfound peace. In Liberia, long-term aid is problematic because of international opposition to the repressive government of President Charles Taylor, but donors should continue to seek creative ways to bolster civil society and offer reliable protection monitoring to camps for refugees and internally displaced persons.

Conclusion 
The findings of the report, "Sexual Violence and Exploitation: The Experience of Refugee Children in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone," are shocking but, in many respects, not surprising. The conditions that helped create such problems have been festering for more than a decade, obvious to those who live in or visit the region. The fact that those conditions have been allowed to persist is a blot on UNHCR, on policymakers, and on relief and advocacy agencies that failed to improve the situation year after year.

UNHCR and Save the Children/United Kingdom deserve praise for their assessment of the problem of sexual exploitation of minors and their decision to release their findings in a straightforward manner despite institutional embarrassment caused by the report's findings. Other international relief organizations operating in West Africa should support the report, acknowledge problems that exist in the field, add additional information and analysis where possible, and take all necessary steps to address the problem of sexual exploitation suffered by highly vulnerable uprooted children.

Opinion by Jeff Drumtra, US Committee for Refugees