Report: ‘Dozens’ More Women, Girls Accuse W.H.O. Ebola Workers of Rape and Sex Abuse

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) is still wrestling with a sexual abuse scandal stemming from its 2018-2019 mission to fight Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

On Wednesday, the U.N.-founded New Humanitarian reported that “dozens more women have come forward” to accuse W.H.O. employees, and other aid workers, of sexually exploiting them.

More than 50 women have accused Ebola aid workers from @WHO and leading NGOs of sexual exploitation and abuse in the #DRCongo, a joint investigation by The @newhumanitarian and @TRF has revealed. https://t.co/a5Q2WqDch6 pic.twitter.com/6KUwAS5FQ0

— GIJN Africa (@gijnAfrica) September 30, 2020

The New Humanitarian partnered with Reuters to expose the W.H.O. sexual abuse crisis in September 2020. The original report included allegations from over 50 women, with corroborating testimony from witnesses who worked for other humanitarian agencies in the DRC.

In May 2021, a secondary scandal erupted when senior W.H.O. officials were caught lying about their knowledge of the allegations, which included such abuses as doctors working for the Ebola mission telling local women they could only gain employment by offering sexual favors. According to some of the complainants, virtually all local women employed by W.H.O. and certain other agencies during the Ebola crisis were abused, having been lured by the promise of double their normal wages. The men who demanded sex for employment allegedly disdained birth control, resulting in several pregnancies. Some of the victims said they were not merely propositioned, but violently assaulted, or drugged and raped.

“They hired you with their eyeballs. They’d look you up and down before they’d make an offer,” one Congolese woman told the New Humanitarian in 2020.

On Wednesday, the New Humanitarian reported 34 new allegations were uncovered when it conducted follow-up reporting last September. Twenty-six of the women said they became pregnant as a result of sexual abuse. Eighteen of the complaints concerned W.H.O. staff, five said they were abused by UNICEF staffers, and one complaint apiece was lodged against World Vision and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Four of the new victims said they were under 18 when they were abused.

Most of the original wave of complaints originated in the Congolese towns of Beni and Butembo, which were central to Ebola response efforts in 2019 and 2020. The new complaints are all from Cantine and Mangina, smaller towns located west of Beni.

The New Humanitarian said it alerted W.H.O. to the new complaints at once, but as of February, none of the women had been contacted by the independent commission W.H.O. established to investigate the scandal. UNICEF told the New Humanitarian to “encourage” the five new complainants to make contact with investigators.

“As of February, W.H.O. and its partner organizations had reached 115 victims, offering one-time payments of $250, counseling, medical care, and transport to appointments. Eleven refused any type of assistance,” the Wednesday report said.

Last month, two of the experts appointed by W.H.O. to investigate allegations of sexual abuse in the DRC slammed the organization’s “restrictive” investigation as “an absurdity.” 

Among other deficiencies, the whistleblowers noted that W.H.O.’s sexual exploitation policies only apply to women who receive aid from the organization, not those who work for it.

“We are not satisfied. The ‘zero tolerance policy’ does not mean engaging in subterfuge to make sure no one is responsible for sexual abuse and exploitation,” the angry investigators, who were personally appointed by W.H.O. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in 2020, told the Associated Press.

Also in February, W.H.O. announced that 104 victims of sexual violence perpetrated by aid workers in the DRC have “accepted the offer of medical, psychological, or financial help” extended by the United Nations Population Fund, which was enlisted by W.H.O. to locate and assist the victims. 

W.H.O. is partnering with two other non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Africa, a Christian group called Heal Africa and Dyamique des Femmes Juristes (DFJ), which provides legal assistance to abused women and children. W.H.O. is publicly committed to compensating all victims of sexual abuse from the Ebola mission in the Congo, even where the perpetrator was not a W.H.O. employee.