Preventing sexual violence against refugees

They run from violence in their home areas to refugee camps in search of protection. In some cases, however, the very people refugees resort to for support become their tormentors, sexually exploiting and abusing them. A recent UN report, for example, noted that its staff were believed to have been involved in sexual exploitation of refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Three years ago, another report had highlighted "widespread" evidence of sexual abuse of West African refugees. In a bid to counter possible sexual exploitation of vulnerable refugees in Kenya, 15 relief agencies got together and signed "The Kenya Code of Conduct for Humanitarian Workers in the Kenya Refugee Program" (Kenya Code) in November 2004. "Following the West African scandal, we felt we had to put mechanisms in place to protect refugees in Kenya from the same fate," Tracy Vaughan Gough, prevention of exploitation and abuse advisor for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Kenya, told IRIN. The Kenya Code has established a shared set of high ethical standards of employee conduct as a first inter-agency step towards preventing the sexual exploitation and abuse of refugees in Kenya, which hosts an estimated 240,000 in two camps - Kakuma in the northwest and Dadaab in the northeast. Following the signing of the code, a consortium made up of the IRC, UNHCR, Filmaid International and CARE launched a project in February 2005 entitled: "Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in the Kenya Refugee Program". The project is designed to support the implementation of the Code and strengthen complementary programmatic and operational initiatives. It is also meant to prevent and respond to cases of sexual exploitation and abuse of beneficiaries perpetrated by members of staff in Kenya. "Its objectives are to increase the capacity of participants in the Kenya refugee programme, to raise awareness among refugees about their rights and to mainstream the prevention of sexual exploitation," Gough said. The project draws on the resources of other global and local initiatives to combat violence against refugees, including the International Council of Voluntary Agencies effort to develop guidelines for conducting investigations into allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of beneficiaries by staff. "We are trying to ensure that sexual exploitation and abuse are humanely and sensitively handled, and that the refugees are fully aware of their rights and the procedures they should follow in the event of abuse," Gough added. Kenya-specific interagency protocols have been developed, as well as standardised complaint and investigation procedures, which all employees working with refugees are expected to study, understand, and abide by. To enable the project to have the greatest possible outreach, the code and its key messages are being translated into all working languages of refugee programme beneficiaries. The code has already been translated into Kiswahili, French, Arabic, Somali and Amharic. "We have developed informational videos to use as educational tools," Gough said, adding that one of the project's main goals was to mainstream the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse in all refugee programmes. The scheme, funded by the US State Department's Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration, was officially launched in December 2004 in Kakuma and Dadaab, and in February in Nairobi. Emphasising that the project was intended to guide all those involved with refugees, Gough added: "Participants in the refugee programme are not the most obvious aid workers. The project targets everyone with a role to play in the refugees' lives, including community health workers, the police and so on." "We expect to continue collaborating with other agencies so that even when the refugees are repatriated to their homes, particularly with the immediate Sudanese case, they remain empowered and protected by the project's guidelines," she added. The consequences of sexual exploitation and abuse, including post-traumatic stress, unwanted pregnancies, physical injury and the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, are all devastating to survivors of sex crimes. When perpetrated by those in positions of power, refugee women do not know where to turn for support and often suffer in silence. The outlook in Kenya, according to relief agencies, is promising, with UNHCR reporting that the incidence of rape in Kakuma and Dadaab had gone down from 94 cases in 2000, to just 19 in 2004. During the launch, George Okoth-Obbo, UNHCR's country representative in Kenya, said: "Serious violations of the safety, security and dignity of refugees have occurred in many refugee programmes in the past. It is an irony that refugees have fled their homes because they could not find safety, yet they arrive in asylum to find equally acute forms of danger, fear and anxiety." "The Kenyan government fully supports the adoption and signing of this code today," Mohamed Mahamud, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, said. "The transgression of the rights of refugees, especially sexual abuse and exploitation, cannot be tolerated."