by John Hayward
The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) on Monday issued a report on its effort to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against its staffers around the world.
The report grimly acknowledged that the number of allegations is still increasing, although W.H.O. officials were cautiously optimistic that the numbers are going up because victims feel more comfortable with reporting abuses.
“For the past two years, W.H.O. has intensified our work to prevent and respond to any form of sexual misconduct, sexual exploitation, sexual harassment,” said the organization’s director of Prevention and Response to Sexual misconduct (PRS), Gaya Gamhewage.
“However, the numbers are still going up for the simple reason, I believe, that all the cases have not surfaced yet,” she continued. “So, the numbers will keep going up for some time. But this does not mean that what we are doing is not having any effect. In fact, what we are doing is surfacing this issue, as well.”
“W.H.O. is working on preventing and responding to sexual misconduct related to its own workforce — our staff, our contractors, our implementing partners,” she added.
The crackdown on abuse Gamhewage described was launched in May 2021, when W.H.O. was rocked by allegations of widespread sexual abuse by the personnel it deployed to combat the 2018-2020 Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A number of high-ranking W.H.O. officials were caught lying to conceal the extent of the abuse, much of which was perpetrated by doctors who told Congolese women they could only get desperately needed jobs with W.H.O. if they offered sexual favors in return. A shocking number of women came forward to say they had become pregnant after being forced to have sex with W.H.O. employees.
Similar abuses were reported at other United Nations agencies, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNICEF, the U.N. health charity for children.