Select committee: International Development Committee
Recommendation 23
Seventh Report - Progress on tackling the sexual exploitation and abuse of aid beneficiaries
Published 14 Jan 2021
Paragraph 94
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 enhanced due diligence central assurance assessments that DFID funded Keeping Children Safe to undertake. This is an important step towards developing an understanding of how well partner organisations that receive UK ODA funding are meeting the enhanced safeguarding due diligence requirements. However, only assessing the central offices is a severe limitation. The FCDO should undertake further monitoring of its implementation partners’ adherence to the enhanced safeguarding due diligence requirements in the countries where programmes are implemented to assess how they work with aid beneficiaries. The results of these assessments should be used to inform the FCDO’s ongoing relationship with these organisations. If their implementation of recommendations is found to be too slow then the FCDO should consider the measures it has at its disposal—such banning that organisation from applying for future contracts—to hold the organisation accountable for its actions.
From: International Development Committee, Seventh Report - Progress on tackling the sexual exploitation and abuse of aid beneficiaries (HC 605), paragraph 94, 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".