Major Achievements

Since sexual exploitation and abuse by UN and NGO workers and peacekeepers first gained global media attention in 2002, numerous measures have been taken to combat SEA:

• In 2001, the UN provided Member States with pre-deployment training materials on conduct.
• The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Task Force on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Humanitarian Crises, composed of a number of UN and nongovernmental entities, was established in March 2002. It advised the UN on specific measures, developed agreed definitions of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, provided guidelines for investigations and adopted six standards of behaviour to be included in UN and NGO codes of conduct. The goal was to provide a consistent and effective approach across all agencies.
• This led to the issuance in October 2003 by the Secretary-General of his Bulletin entitled Special Measures for Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse. The SGB stipulates that any acts of sexual exploitation or sexual abuse committed by UN staff members or persons under contract with the UN “constitute acts of serious misconduct and are therefore grounds for disciplinary measures, including summary dismissal.”
• Every year since promulgation of the SGB, the Secretary-General has issued a report containing updates on the scope of the problem and prevention and response measures taken by the UN. (Reports contained in the Tools Repository)
• In 2004, the UN Secretary-General invited H.R.H. Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein, the Permanent Representative of Jordan to the UN, to act as his Adviser on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by UN Peacekeeping Personnel. In March 2005, the Zeid Report, "A comprehensive strategy to eliminate future sexual exploitation and abuse in United Nations Peacekeeping operations" (A/59/710), was released. The role of Adviser ended with the conclusion of Prince Zeid’s term as the ambassador to the UN Mission of Jordan.
• In the aftermath of the 2002 global media coverage on sexual exploitation, several NGOs worked alongside UN entities to scrutinize their responses to complaints against staff. Some of the findings included inadequate and inconsistent complaints mechanisms, insufficient numbers of in-house investigators and a lack of awareness of sexual exploitation and abuse amongst managers. Accordingly, the international community agreed to create standardized resources for promoting complaints mechanisms, training investigators and sensitizing managers to the issue. This initiative evolved into the Building Safer Organizations (BSO) project in 2004.
• Since its inception in 2004, the Building Safer Organizations project (BSO) has been helping organizations to apply principles of good complaints and response systems to cases of sexual exploitation and abuse by staff. BSO has helped NGOs achieve greater accountability by:
  • training NGO staff through the BSO Investigations Learning Programme (LP) on conducting fair, thorough and confidential investigations into complaints of sexual exploitation and abuse of disaster survivors;
  • promoting implementation of common standards on preventing and responding to sexual exploitation and abuse through working with national and regional networks;
  • publishing Guidelines on complaints mechanisms and investigation procedures and a training Handbook containing the Investigations Learning Programme
  • providing opportunities for peer to peer engagement;
  • supporting NGOs to develop better practices through research and advocacy, including the disaster survivor consultations report "To complain or not Complain: still the question" 
• Also in 2005, the UN and NGO Task Force on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of the Executive Committees on Humanitarian Affairs and on Peace and Security (ECHA/ECPS) took up the work of the IASC Task Force.
• In 2006, senior leaders from UN and non-UN entities gathered at a High-level conference to discuss prevention and response to sexual exploitation and abuse by UN and NGO personnel. At the conference, UN and non-UN entities endorsed a Statement of Commitment with 10 action points.(See Tools Repository)
• In July 2007, a new model memorandum of understanding was adopted between troop-contributing countries and the UN, which includes specific provisions on sexual exploitation and abuse.
• In 2007, the General Assembly adopted an UN-wide strategy on assistance to victims of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN staff and related personnel.
• In 2007, the BSO project moved to Humanitarian Accountability Partnership International (HAP) and now is part of the HAP’s Complaints Handling Unit. HAP and BSO together have widened their scope to support NGOs on complaints and response mechanisms within a more comprehensive and systemic quality assurance framework.
• The General Assembly adopted a resolution on criminal accountability in December 2007 to address the extension of jurisdiction to cover criminal misconduct of UN officials or experts on mission.
• The IASC Task Force, the ECHA/ECPS Task Force and individual agencies and organizations developed training, management and other tools to address sexual exploitation and abuse.(See Tools Repository)
• A number of individual agencies/departments instituted an array of programmes and procedures to prevent and respond to SEA. For instance, see the MONUC website. (See Useful Links)
• In 2008, the ECHA/ECPS UN and NGO Task Force held a meeting of PSEA experts from around the world. The meeting resulted in agreement on a number of ways to move the issue forward, namely to support pilot countries on PSEA efforts, develop a tools repository, enhance training efforts, further translate and distribute To Serve with Pride, develop guidance on complaints mechanism, investigations, victim assistance and SGB implementation and develop a managerial compliance mechanism.
• In 2010, the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) completed a Review of Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by UN, NGO, IOM and IFRC Personnel. The Review concluded that the advancement of protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) in the humanitarian community would be best served if the IASC were to resume its leadership on the issue. This was due to the need to address the high risk of SEA in humanitarian contexts; the lack of progress within the humanitarian sector compared with the peacekeeping sector; the need to focus the humanitarian community on improving implementation of the Secretary-General’s Bulletin: Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse (ST/SGB/2003/13); and the need to engage humanitarian leaders at the highest level – which was argued throughout the report as the most critical factor in securing progress in PSEA. The IASC Task Force took up the work of the ECHA/ECPS Task Force in December 2010 and continues its work today.