This week, one of the world’s best-known and biggest disaster relief charities, Oxfam, was hit by shocking allegations that its employees exploited children whom they were supposed to help.
It is reported by the Times newspaper that the allegations date back to the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake on the island of Haiti. Following the earthquake, it was estimated 220,000 people died, 300,000 were injured and 1.5 million people were left homeless.
Haiti was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 86% of people who lived were living in ‘slum conditions’.
The Times published an investigation revealing that in 2011, some Oxfam aid workers sent used sex workers on charity property in the country.
The shocking investigations included descriptions that a group of male aid workers lived in a guesthouse rented by Oxfam that they called ‘the whorehouse’, where they engaged in orgies with prostitutes as young as 14 years.
Other allegations included bullying, intimidation, harassment and the use of ‘pornographic and illegal material’ on work computers.
As a result, six men, and the country director, Roland van Hauwermeiren, left the charity following the 2011 investigation.
On Monday, the Haitian president, Jovenel Moise, called the allegations a ‘violation of basic human decency’.
Following the damning investigations, are there more allegations to come?
After The Times’ story, Oxfam said the behaviour of some of their staff members in Haiti in 2011 was ‘totally unacceptable’ and ‘contrary to [the] values and high standards we expect of our staff’. Following the invitations and report, high profile public figures have begun to distance themselves from Oxfam and funds that they would normally receive as support is now under question.
The Bible has instructions as to how the poor or vulnerable should be treated and states:
‘I, the Lord, command you to do what is just and right. Protect the person who is being cheated from the one who is cheating him. Do not ill-treat or oppress foreigners, orphans, or widows; and do not kill innocent people in this holy place.’ (Jeremiah 22:3).
Those who have been exploited in Haiti are victims of both natural and human disaster and their position is seen as a demonstration of human failings.
Tahar Ben Jelloun stated that’ I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that’s not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.’
We have a moral and social responsibility to pray and intercede for both victims and perpetrators alike. So, this week let us pray for Oxfam and all those affected, that God’s Holy Spirit may heal a broken organisation and people.
