Dateline ACT

West Africa 01/02

Breaking the chain of violence and abuse

ACT and its members work on action plans to ensure prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse of displaced women and children

Geneva, July 2, 2002
By Callie Long

Yassa Gayflor pounds the earth with fierce determination. She's been set the task of building her own shelter - a new home here in the chaotic confines of Jah Tondo, a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) near Liberia's capital, Monrovia. She is however making no headway - the hard-baked earth defying her attempts to dig holes deep enough to eventually hold the framework of the construction. It is a back-breaking task, and if the look on her face is anything to go by, one more hurdle to overcome on this long hazardous journey that has brought her to this place.

Yassa is one of thousands of women who fled their homes and the conflict in Liberia, making their way with their children to the safety of camps for the uprooted and displaced. Once there, these women and their children faced other hazards - one of which was the possibility of being sexually exploited and abused.

It was within this context that a report commissioned by the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UK based agency, Save the Children, sent shock waves through the world and especially the humanitarian relief community. Allegations of widespread sexual exploitation and abuse of refugee children by amongst others, humanitarian aid workers, formed the basis of the report. Action by Churches Together (ACT) International - a world-wide alliance of churches and related agencies working in the field of humanitarian relief - immediately responded by sending an ecumenical field mission team to the region to investigate the allegations and offer support to its members in the three West African countries where the abuses were alleged to have taken place: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The team published its final report - which was adopted by ACT - in May. ACT, in consultation with its members, now has the task of addressing the recommendations in the report, ensuring that the practices of its operational members protects and ensures the security of all displaced people.

Lutheran World Federation (LWF) - one of the ACT members operational in the sub-region - after itself sending an assessment team to West Africa, reported that no involvement of LWF employees in the alleged abuses could be verified, or specific instances of poor or inadequate systems and procedures identified. The team however noted that the prevailing cycle of poverty and conflict created a context of opportunity for exploitation.

Given the circumstances and the daily realities of camp life, LWF has since taken several actions to prevent sexual exploitation, especially of female children. These actions include amongst others staff sensitivity and awareness sessions, hiring more women to work in the IDP camps LWF manages, safeguarding female children through appropriate camp planning and layout and the issuing of a declaration of intolerance. Staff working directly with refugees and IDPs have been warned that any appearance of exploitation, specifically of female children, would result in the immediate loss of their jobs.

In camps like Jah Tondo, there is no escaping the poverty. People barely survive from food parcel to food parcel.

Yassa Gayflor left everything behind when she fled her home in Bomi. She is twenty years old. She has three small children to look after. And her husband has been missing ever since she fled. Yassa's story is the story of thousands of other women throughout the sub-region. These are women who are thrust into positions of heads of households, single income earners and in Yassa's instance, the one who will physically, brace by brace, cross-piece by cross-piece, mud-brick by mud-brick, build her own house. That's when she eventually manages to dig holes deep enough to anchor the frame of her new home. She may or may not receive help at some point, but in this environment, where everyone is forced to erect a shelter as fast as they can in a race against the coming rains, voluntary labor is as scarce a commodity as food. This is a place where after all, people supplement their diet with locusts. This is a world where most people have lost everything they ever had and a world where in some instances abusers are alleged to have had the opportunity of exploiting those they were supposed to care for.

Life is tough right now for Yassa Gayflor. But given the fact that local and international NGOs, including ACT's members, are doing everything in their power to prevent sexual abuse and violence, women like Yassa may never find themselves being told - food or sex.

In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, members of the Liberian Council of Churches spoke about the breakdown of morals and values in a society still caught up in conflict. Clashes between government forces and rebel soldiers of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy continue to paralyse key areas of the country. The brutal impact of the civil war is visible everywhere -- in the markets, streets and faces of people who have witnessed the full horror of war and been left destitute.

"What are the causes of sexual exploitation?" asks the General Secretary of the Liberian Council of Churches General Secretary, Rev. Plezzant Harris. "What causes this poverty? This promiscuity? This terrible new way of life? This need for things and food?"

While people do not want to make excuses, they do distinguish between prostitution and the exploitation of vulnerable people by relief workers and others in positions of power. In an environment mired in poverty, where people have limited choices, sex work is widespread. It is, many have noted, a fertile breeding ground for exploitation.

All the ACT members in the sub-region agree that the allegations were a wake-up call to everyone involved in the field of humanitarian relief. It is a challenge that every humanitarian agency working in this region has agonised over - how to help and bring adequate relief when emergency programs in this part of the world are chronically under-funded.

In Jah Tondo, one of the aid workers who knows Yassa, quietly explains that camp management had decided that it would be good for Yassa to build her own house. She was wasting away with depression, simply sitting quietly by herself and not speaking, incapable of doing anything to help herself. He hopes that the activity might lift her spirit somewhat. But Yassa's pain is deep. Haltingly she explains that she simply wants to find her husband. That she wants to go home. That "yes", she will build her shelter, but, that more than anything else, she simply wants her life back.