What happens to sexual abuse survivors after the headlines fade?

It’s a scourge that never seems to stay out of the headlines for long: UN peacekeepers and aid workers accused of sexually abusing and exploiting women and children.

Despite so-called “zero tolerance” policies and pledges from the UN and aid organisations to root out perpetrators, harrowing accounts from survivors keep surfacing, as we discovered in our investigation about how 50 women described being lured into sex-for-work schemes by aid workers during the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But what happens to survivors after the headlines fade? 

For many, justice has remained elusive, with cases either dismissed or still pending years later. For others, the stigma associated with the abuse, legal hurdles, and organisational lethargy has stood in the way of women seeking reparations. What can be done to help women find justice – however they define it? Can there be justice with continued impunity?

These are some of the questions that The New Humanitarian’s investigations editor, Paisley Dodds, put to four thought leaders from the humanitarian and private sector in this virtual panel discussion.