"Amid allegations of sexual abuse by United Nations peacekeepers in the world's conflict zones, humanitarian aid workers are speaking out about what they describe as a culture of sexual misconduct within the UN and other major international humanitarian organizations.
FRONTLINE recently investigated abuse by peacekeepers in the documentary UN Sex Abuse Scandal. Since the early 1990s, more than 2,000 young women and children have been allegedly sexually exploited or abused by UN peacekeepers in missions across the world.
But allegations of sexual misconduct have also emerged from within the ranks of the UN and other aid organizations, according to multiple experts and former humanitarian aid workers. They describe a male-dominated sector where workers frequently move from post-to-post and are often placed in high-stress environments with little oversight and inadequate reporting mechanisms...
'[I]t is increasingly clear that [abuse] happens more than organizations are aware of, more than organizations are willing to acknowledge, and that there aren't great mechanisms for supporting women who have been abused in the field,' said Dina Francesca Haynes, director of the Human Rights and Immigration Law Project at New England Law. 'The larger issue has to do with a pervasive culture of sexism and gender inequality.'"