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WHO Investigating Sexual Abuse Allegations in Congo Ebola Response

VOA News

   The World Health Organization announced Tuesday it would investigate
   newly released reports of alleged sexual exploitation and abuse against
   Congolese individuals perpetrated by the WHO's Ebola aid workers in the
   Democratic Republic of Congo.

   A year-long investigation by the New Humanitarian and the Thomson
   Reuters Foundation included interviews with 51 women who recounted
   several instances of abuse during the 2018 to 2020 Ebola crisis --
   mainly by men who self-identified as working for the WHO.

   The investigation also identified abuses by members of the U.N.
   Children's Fund (UNICEF), Medecins Sans Frontieres, Oxfam, World
   Vision, the U.S. migration agency IOM, the medical charity ALIMA and
   Congo's health ministry.

   The majority of accounts said that numerous men frequently plied women
   with drinks and either had propositioned them, forced them to have sex
   in exchange for a job, or terminated their contracts when they refused.

   Some women were hired on short-term contracts and promised salaries
   more than twice the standard wage in the area. There were also accounts
   of women being locked in rooms by men who solicited jobs or threatened
   to terminate their employment if they did not comply.

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