LONDON (AlertNet) - A shocking report that sexual exploitation of refugee children in exchange for aid is more extensive in West Africa than was realised has motivated humanitarian organisations to work out better ways of curbing such practices and protecting the vulnerable.

The agencies that commissioned the report containing the allegations -- the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and British-based Save the Children -- have said that they will not publish the names of NGOs accused of involvement, but are working together on measures that they hope will stop endemic sexual exploitation and deal with its consequences.

"Most of the allegations concerned male national staff who had traded humanitarian commodities and services for sex with girls under 18," the UNHCR said in a statement after the initial findings were made public in February.

The report was based on interviews and group meetings with 1,500 adults and children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"It involves actors at all levels, including those who are engaged to protect the very children they are exploiting"

"Sexual violence and exploitation of children appears to be extensive... and involves actors at all levels, including those who are engaged to protect the very children they are exploiting," the report says.

It alleges that perpetrators include staff of the United Nations and international and national NGOs, security forces, government officials, community leaders, diamond miners, logging company employees, and local businessmen, parents, grandparents, priests and teachers.

The report describes a complex situation in which most of the allegations concern sexual exploitation rather than sexual abuse.

"The children themselves, while aware of the exploitative nature of the exchange, felt this was often the only option they had in order to receive food and other basic necessities and to pay for education," says the report.

The report quotes a teenager in Liberia as saying: "It's difficult to escape the trap of those (NGO) people; they use the food as bait to get you to sex with them."

SEX FOR A FEW BISCUITS

Often, the payment for sex amounted to a few biscuits, a plastic sheet or a bar of soap, the report says.

Parents generally turned a blind eye, or in some cases encouraged their daughters, according to the report.

A refugee woman in Liberia told the authors: "I am a mother of seven children and when the food finishes my youngest child keeps crying and pulling on my skirt. What do you think you can do if your daughter brings you some?"

UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said that the assessment team went to the region to look into gender-based violence and exploitation, but testimonies indicated that the problem was much larger than expected.

He told AlertNet: "A lot of the programmes that we have in place around the world are more aimed at gender-based violence, so this exploitation issue is something that we really need to get a grip on."

"Most knew of or had heard of a child who had been sexually violated "

The environment of endemic exploitation contributes directly to high levels of sexual violence, the report says.

"Most of the children who took part in the assessment knew of or had heard of a child who had been sexually violated," it says.

Redmond said: "Everybody right now is aware of this problem. What we want to do now is get together and work together to address it. I don't think there's a question of turf or responsibility here, I think it's a problem that requires the efforts of all of us."

FAR-REACHING CONSEQUENCES

According to the picture painted by the report, even if exploitation were eradicated overnight, some of its consequences would be far-reaching. For example, a high incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, the absence of relationships not based on transactions, and the psychological impact on children.

The authors also found a very apparent sector of young mothers. "Even though these girls were now 19, they already had three to four children and had first become pregnant when they were 13 or 14 years."

NGOs did not have specific records on the subject, but community members said that 50 percent of teenage girls in the camp were pregnant, and 75 percent of girls in school were pregnant.

Redmond said: "It does have implications globally. This is not just a problem in West Africa."

Refugee specialists said that insufficient funding for the UNHCR in Africa had left refugees vulnerable to exploitation.

Redmond said: "Ultimately, exploitation and abuse is individual behaviour, and the individuals are responsible, so we're not saying that it is entirely a problem of funding or resources."

"It does have implications globally. This is not just a problem in West Africa"

However, he added: "Over the last couple of years we have had a substantial shortfall in funding for UNHCR... Donors can do a lot more if they would adequately fund us and our NGO partners and other humanitarian agencies. We have had substantial cutbacks from 10 to 15 percent for the last couple of years. The bottom line is that this affects real people."

He said that in the same time period, the UNHCR had been allocated an annual budget of a billion dollars, but only received an average of $800 million.

The UNHCR/Save the Children report describes a breakdown in social cohesion as a result of conflicts and violence.

Redmond told Reuters in Geneva that the apparent scale of the affair was probably due to the fact that two of the three countries involved had had no effective central government over long periods and the region had some of the worst poverty in the world.

NGOS WILL NOT BE NAMED

Redmond told AlertNet: "This is almost a societal problem. It is a very difficult thing to address"

"Sometimes it's a totally chaotic situation in these camps, where international presence is restricted, sometimes non-existent, and that lends itself to that kind of exploitation and behaviour, when people are totally at the mercy of all sorts of people."

The report says that the investigators received allegations against 67 individuals working for agencies responsible for refugee care.

Redmond said: "We do not believe it is fair to specifically name agencies that have been mentioned in one form or another in anecdotes from children."

Instead, he said, agencies would be informed about accusations against their employees.

"We've taken steps against staff against whom allegations were made"

Brendan Paddy, Save the Children UK's senior media officer for emergencies, told AlertNet: "Clearly those will be followed up by the organisations concerned. Save the Children, because we're involved in the research, had early warning of this and we've already taken steps against staff against whom allegations were made.

"There's a much broader and in a sense a more important picture, because we're also interested in preventing this from continuing to happen."

Redmond said that it was up to individual organisations whether they wanted to identify themselves publicly.

Ruud Huurman of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) in the Netherlands explained why his organisation had decided to go public: "It was obvious that this was circulating. We know that in some summaries our name was listed in a sort of overview. We wanted to give a clear signal that it was a very alarming finding that this mission came up with.

"We also need a very thorough discussion at the level of our teams in the field to try to identify solutions.

DIFFERENT ANSWERS

"MSF always has expats on the ground working with national teams. Other NGOs work mostly with national staff with less supervision. I think each of us will have different answers to the problem."

The UNHCR has guidelines on sexual violence against refugees, compiled in 1995 and largely pertinent to the Balkan conflicts and the aftermath of the Rwanda crisis in which the UNHCR was involved at the time. They do not envisage endemic sexual exploitation of children on the scale described in the UNHCR/Save the Children report.

Huurman said: "It's easy to find blunt statements like: 'This should be forbidden and whenever we find out we will fire someone'. We believe that if someone has really crossed lines then we should take appropriate measures.

"Just a rule -- a code of conduct -- is not sufficient"

"The problem is that this issue has been hidden until this report came out, so the reality is apparently much more complex and we should look at ways to pick up signals. Only then is the time for proper action. So the concern should probably be much more that it hasn't been discussed or mentioned before."

Huurman said: "Just a rule -- a code of conduct -- is not sufficient."

Redmond said that existing guidelines could be enough. "I don't know if new guidelines are required. I think it's a matter of implementation."

The 1995 UNHCR Guidelines on Sexual Violence Against Refugees recommend that camp designers should take into account the potential for sexual violence, and recommends extra protection for single women and unaccompanied children.

However, the UNHCR/Save the Children team found that children were being sexually attacked when they went to wash clothes and kitchen utensils in streams around camps, when they were taking baths, when collecting firewood from the brush, and near toilets and latrines.

Redmond said: "A lot of those same measures for violence or exploitation -- camp layout and those kinds of things -- have been implemented in a lot of places worldwide."

Huurman said that different organisations followed different guidelines. For example, he said that MSF Holland currently had a code of conduct for its expatriate workers but not for local employees.

TAKING MEASURES

Organisations will have to consider carefully their responses on many levels, to meet the needs of children affected by exploitation and abuse, to change the conditions for children in West African camps, and to do all they can to protect children in other parts of the world from similar treatment.

"We need to rotate staff, we need to get more presence of international staff. Of course, that costs money"

Redmond said: "Immediately since we started getting indications of this from the authors of this report in November, we began taking measures. Among those, we need to rotate staff, we need to get more presence of international staff. Of course, that costs money."

In Liberia, the UNHCR has begun rotating field staff, hiring agricultural specialists to increase opportunities for refugees to engage in farming activities, and working with the government to establish police posts in camps.

In Guinea, it initiated a campaign to increase the number of girls in schools in August 2001, alongside income generation grants and loans.

In Sierra Leone, the agency has established a confidential reporting system for people to report cases of exploitation or abuse.

In all three countries, UNHCR has worked on raising awareness among agency employees and refugees about sexual exploitation and gender-based violence, deployed additional staff specialising in child protection, increased the number of female employees, and increased monitoring of aid distribution.

Redmond said a working group of UNHCR and NGO representatives was meeting regularly to develop a plan of action.

Paddy said that the UNHCR, Save the Children, World Vision and the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) were among the agencies most active in this group.

Brendan Paddy said a final report would be published shortly.

"It would be a tragedy if we were to simply treat this as a need to investigate the relatively small number of individuals identified. We have to look at the message of the study itself, which is that this problem is widespread. It affects many areas, all three countries, and many agencies, and we have to move forward on that basis," he said.