DRC: dozens of women accuse aid workers of sexual abuse
Emergency care units at the Ebola treatment center of the humanitarian medical organization Alima, in Beni, eastern DRC.
REUTERS / Baz Ratner
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In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, around 50 women accuse employees of United Nations agencies and international NGOs of sexual abuse.
The WHO, among the accused agencies, announces the opening of an investigation.
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From our correspondent in Bamako,
Coralie Pierret
This is what a survey signed
The New Humanitarian and the Thomson Reuters Foundation
reveals
.
The facts would have occurred between 2018 and 2020 as part of the fight against
the Ebola virus
.
Women, who never reported these rapes for fear of reprisals, accuse several employees of UN agencies and NGOs of sexual abuse.
They are cooks, housekeepers, community workers, paid between 50 and 100 dollars per month.
A total of 51 women accused international workers of sexual abuse.
Among them, at least 30 say that employees of the World Health Organization were involved.
The WHO, which assured Tuesday that its workers were "
scandalized
" by these allegations, opened an internal investigation.
“
The acts allegedly committed by people who say they work for the WHO are unacceptable and will be fully investigated.
(...) Anyone whose involvement in such acts has been identified will be held to account and face serious consequences, including immediate dismissal
, ”the WHO said
in a statement
.
The other men they accuse come from other organizations such as Unicef, Oxfam, Médecins sans frontières, the International Organization for Migration, World Vision and ALIMA.
Most of the testimonies were collected in the town of Béni, in eastern DRC.
Some alleged victims claim they were trapped in offices or hospitals.
Some were said to have been forced to accept sexual advances in exchange for a promise of employment or were threatened with dismissal.
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