Select committee: International Development Committee
Recommendation 10
Seventh Report - Progress on tackling the sexual exploitation and abuse of aid beneficiaries
Published 14 Jan 2021
Paragraph 43
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
International Development Committee Sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector: next steps All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We welcome the plans that the FCDO has to improve data relating to sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector. We believe this is a key step to understanding the scale of the problem and will enable the international community to better evaluate efforts taken to combat sexual exploitation and abuse. To facilitate the collection of data, the FCDO should make it clear to its partners that reporting cases of sexual exploitation and abuse will not be treated as a reason to be penalised, as long as they can demonstrate that they have robust mechanisms in place to deal with the misconduct. FCDO partners should report annually their total number of safeguarding allegations they receive and the number that are upheld.
From: International Development Committee, Seventh Report - Progress on tackling the sexual exploitation and abuse of aid beneficiaries (HC 605), paragraph 43, 14 January 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 6 April 2021.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and states that, unless otherwise stated, it agrees with each of the 30 recommendations, partially agreeing with some and disagreeing with others.
- On the recommended full audit of whistleblowing practices, the government says it does "not agree", citing resource and time costs, and prefers assessing partners before funding and ongoing monitoring.
- On making aid work a regulated activity requiring Enhanced DBS checks, it disagrees with the recommendation "as written", but has set up a working group to explore the issues faced in checking criminal histories.
- On reporting NDA numbers, it partially agrees: it agrees NDAs must not be misused but does not think counting them is effective, and is "actively exploring" adding clearer language to funding templates and due diligence.
- On annual reporting, it "certainly intend[s]" to replicate DFID's safeguarding section in the FCDO's annual report, though the structure is "still to be finalised". On the UN trust fund for victims, it says it has "recently agreed to do this".