By Jacqui Hunt
LONDON, Mar 3 2022 (IPS)

At Equality Now, we have been on a years-long journey to track and analyze sexual violence laws and their implementation around the world. This work was born after working with survivors of sexual violence for over two decades and observing that women and girls reported similar barriers to justice regardless of where they were from.

While local, national, and regional context impact a victim’s experience, it is also clear that many of the challenges they face are universal.

From Eurasia to the Caribbean, to South Asia and North Africa, we discovered laws which were supposedly meant to protect women and girls but in reality it perpetuated, and in some cases, even promoted gender-based violence and discrimination.

We found instances of so called “marry your rapist” laws which permit rapists to avoid legal accountability by marrying their victims, the decriminalization of marital rape, and laws that use terminology of chastity and honor rather than consent.

While there is a range of ways in how laws in themselves are failing victims of sexual violence, one common trend is that the implementation of laws around the world neglect to take into account the unique needs and vulnerabilities of marginalized communities.

Many countries do not apply an intersectional lens when implementing sexual violence laws, resulting in the further marginalization of already underserved populations. For example, in Guatemala, indigenous survivors face additional barriers to justice due to insufficient translation services and the lack of geographically accessible courts and law enforcement.

In Georgia, the ability of women living with disabilities, particularly those with psycho-social needs, to testify in their own cases might be wrongly discounted. In the United States, a legacy of structural racism has resulted in a distrust of law enforcement by communities of color, resulting in low reporting rates of sexual violence by Black women.

And around the world, we found that adolescent girls were routinely under-protected by sexual violence laws and frequently negatively stereotyped when seeking justice.

UN officials say that gender-based violence is a “shadow pandemic,” hidden beneath COVID-19. Credit: UNDP

Adolescent girls are uniquely vulnerable to experiencing sexual violence, and yet too often they are denied access to justice and support services. The emergence of girls’ sexuality during puberty is frequently used as a justification to disinvest in their schooling and personal development while simultaneously appropriating their labor, sexuality, and fertility.

No longer afforded the protections of childhood, nor recognized as adults, they find themselves in a precarious position, often victimized and labelled sexually promiscuous or a “temptress,” leaving them isolated and unsupported rather than protected from exploitation and abuse.

Additionally, a dearth of age-appropriate services and education means that adolescents are often not fully aware of their rights and lack the ability to self-advocate even when legal recourse is available to them.

Some discrimination is even embedded in the law itself. Estupro laws or provisions, which are found throughout Latin America and in substance in other laws further afield, allow for lesser penalties for the rape of an adolescent above the age of consent than for an adult woman or child below the age of consent.

Criminal justice officials utilize estupro provisions to portray adolescent girls as manipulative seductresses who tempt adult men into illicit sex. These laws perpetuate the misconception that victims are often, at least partially, responsible for their own abuse and that rape is simply an act of sexual deviance rather than one of violence, control, and entitlement.

By suggesting that sexual violence is the fault of the victim, estupro provisions contribute to a wider culture of victim blaming, in turn deterring survivors from reporting crimes and seeking help. This means that cases either aren’t prosecuted, thereby allowing impunity for the perpetrator, or that these lesser charges are brought, thereby reducing punishment for the perpetrator.

Stigma surrounds all forms of sexual violence, but cases of incest are especially taboo and thus survivors of this form of violence are even less likely to receive justice. According to UNICEF, 40-60 % of known sexual assaults within the family are committed against girls aged 15 and younger, thus adolescent girls are particularly impacted by the silence around this form of abuse.

In cases of incest, the perpetrator is most often a male family member and there is a strong tendency to keep the abuse private at all costs, at the expense of the rights and wellbeing of the victim– most often a young or adolescent girl. By keeping the matter under wraps, the victims of familial abuse will often suffer long lasting and devastating psychological, emotional and physical consequences.

Equality Now’s study, conducted with Pakistani partners, of incest in Pakistan found that child and adolescent victims of incest faced numerous barriers, including: stigma as a barrier to reporting, attitudes of law enforcement, prosecutorial misconduct, untrained medical professionals, drawn-out trials, and a lack of youth-specific services.

In the rare cases where girls and adolescents attempted to report a case of incest, they were met by a criminal justice system that shamed and stigmatized them. One fifteen-year-old girl who was raped by her father was told by the police that she was “doing something wrong” by reporting her abuse and that by speaking publicly she would “stain her family’s honor.”

Her experience was unfortunately not unique. Another young woman reported that the police refused to take her statement about being raped by her brother-in-law because they claimed that it was simply an instance of “enmity between two families.”

It is difficult for all survivors of sexual violence to receive justice and to stand up against laws and systems that seek to undermine their credibility, but for adolescent girls the challenge is even greater.

For them, and for their future as women, we need robust laws, survivor-informed and gender-sensitive implementation, and intentional collaboration between all actors to ensure that every survivor’s needs are considered, addressed, and supported.

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Horror of sexual exploitation in the aid sector must be confronted. Credit: International Development Committee

By Jacqui Hunt
LONDON, Aug 6 2018 (IPS)

A new report on the scale and extent of sexual abuse and exploitation in the aid sector should come as no surprise. It is now time for international agencies, including the UN, to step up and show some much-needed leadership to tackle this issue once and for all.

The report, published 31 July 2018 by the UK House of Commons International Development Committee (IDC), has condemned the “complacency, verging on complicity” of the aid sector in responding to widespread sexual abuse and exploitation by its staff.

The IDC established its enquiry following revelations that Oxfam covered up accounts of sexual misconduct be senior employees, including allegations that staff made women – some of whom may have been minors – transact sex for aid during the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

The enquiry and subsequent report reveal that this is far from an isolated incident, with the several aid and development organizations involved apparently being more concerned with their reputation than with the safety of victims.

While outrage at these findings is appropriate, unfortunately surprise is not. The enquiry’s report reaffirms what those of us campaigning for change have known for some time: sexual abuse and exploitation is endemic, and is sustained through a lack of accountability for perpetrators. It is carried out in all walks of life, including by the so-called good guys.

A sector-wide issue

For years, aid organizations have systematically ignored problems and failed to effectively implement policies to stop predatory sexual misbehavior, including the use of prostituted women and girls.

Let’s be clear. Whether or not you believe prostitution is sexual exploitation or not, there is no such thing as a child prostitute and men who “buy” sex from minors are rapists.

Reporting procedures are often unclear or non-existent, and the prevailing lack of accountability has undermined reporting mechanisms by sending a strong message that there is little to be achieved by disclosing allegations.

Even in cases where abuse is reported, culprits have often not been held to account, and instead have been moved to different posts or enabled to get jobs at other organizations within the sector, where they have abused more victims elsewhere.

Adding to the toxic mix has been the tendency for whistleblowers to feel penalized, unprotected, and at risk of their career being damaged by speaking out.

These issues have made it impossible to accurately measure the true extent of the problem, although according to the IDC, the cases recently made public are just the “tip of the iceberg”.

This kind of impunity for those who sexually exploit and abuse others when they are at their most vulnerable is utterly unacceptable. Aid and development agencies need to put in place effective zero tolerance policies regarding sexual exploitation, including a total and enforced ban on staff and contractor use of prostitution.

This involves having a comprehensive understanding about the various crosscutting forms of discrimination and oppression that women and girls may face, and which are exacerbated in situations of conflict and natural disasters.

A lack of support for victims compounds the problem. The IDC report recommends a ‘victim-centered’ approach, where their welfare is put front and center. This needs to be fully integrated across all aspects of the sector’s response.

Indeed, evidence submitted jointly by Rape Crisis and Equality Now is referenced in the report, citing our recommendation that anyone who speaks out about violations should be afforded independent advocacy and support from a specialist in sexual violence and its impacts.

The role of the UN

Addressing these issues will require fundamental changes to be made to the way that aid and development agencies operate, and the IDC’s findings highlight the need for clear and effective leadership to guide best practice in the sector.

As the gold standard for international aid agencies, it is the UN that should be leading by example.

The United Nations has admitted receiving 70 new allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse from April to June this year alone. However, the UN has itself consistently failed to address sexual abuse and exploitation, not only of aid recipients but also of its own staff – something on which Equality Now has been calling for change since at least 2009.

The IDC report is critical of the UN for its lack of joined-up approach, despite its self-professed “zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse.” This is not the first time that the UN has come under fire for its ineffectiveness in this area, with revelations earlier this year about key exemptions to its policy “making a mockery” of its ongoing fight against harassment.

With the aid sector reeling from the recent revelations, and the extent of the problem clear from the IDC report, it is now more important than ever for the UN to put in place clear, effective policies that protect victims and whistleblowers.

The tremendous work achieved by the international development sector should not mean we turn a blind eye to sexual exploitation and other violence and abuse of power perpetrated predominantly against women and girls by men employed in the industry.

It is crucial that all those within the industry take account of the superior position of power that someone from an aid organization may have and can easily exert over those who are vulnerable. Sexual exploitation must end and the exploiters held properly accountable – the UN among others has to fully recognize and internalize its role in achieving this, and step up to the challenge.

*Jacqui Hunt is a prominent campaigner for women and girls’ rights, and has spearheaded several of Equality Now’s successful campaigns, including for creation of a United Nations Working Group to focus on ending discrimination against women in law and in practice.

A lawyer who trained and worked with international law firm Linklaters, she started her professional career with Amnesty International, working in campaigning and research at the United Nations and in press and special projects. She joined the Board of Equality Now in 1992, the year of its founding, and was later asked to start the London office, which she opened in 2004.

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