Select committee: International Development Committee
Recommendation 13
Seventh Report - Progress on tackling the sexual exploitation and abuse of aid beneficiaries
Published 14 Jan 2021
Paragraph 56
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 Minister’s announcement of new support for victims and survivors and we ask that he provides this Committee with an update on that programme of support once further details are available. We agree with the approach that the FCDO says it is taking to work with and strengthen in-country justice mechanisms. However, we believe it might be helpful for some victims and survivors to be able to contact UK systems directly. Embassy and High Commission staff already have experience of working with the local justice systems in the countries where they are based, through helping British nationals to navigate them. This experience could be used to help support victims and survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse where the perpetrator was British or employed by a British aid organisation.
From: International Development Committee, Seventh Report - Progress on tackling the sexual exploitation and abuse of aid beneficiaries (HC 605), paragraph 56, 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".