Oxfam investigates new sexual misconduct cases as MPs grill bosses

LONDON - Oxfam revealed Tuesday it was investigating 26 new cases of sexual misconduct since the crisis erupted over its handling of a 2011 prostitution scandal in Haiti, which the British charity called a "wake-up call."

Chief executive Mark Goldring told a parliamentary committee in London that the cases varied in their seriousness, while 16 related to its international operation.

"They range in time frame from more recent events to long historic events where people did not report them at the time," he said.

Goldring added he believed the latest cases had emerged as "a direct response to the publicity" around the Haitian scandal. 

"We really want people to come forward," he added.

The Oxfam chief was unable to provide further details on the cases when pressed by British lawmakers. 

The committee said it would be conducting its own inquiry into abuses in the foreign aid sector.

Three of Oxfam's most senior leaders repeatedly apologized for the charity's handling of an internal investigation into the use of prostitutes by staff in Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake. 

Caroline Thomson, chair of trustees, said: "It's right to admit this has been a real wake-up call."

The charity revealed 7,000 regular donors had been lost since the scandal emerged following reporting by The Times newspaper.

It said safeguards had been put in place following the 2011 probe, but admitted they had not gone far enough.

Thomson vowed to take "personal responsibility" for ongoing reform: "I have decided that we need to have more focus on safeguarding."

Last week, Oxfam unveiled an action plan to tackle sexual harassment and abuse, including creating a new vetting system for staff.

The charity formally also apologised to Haiti on Monday over the scandal and for failing to report the matter adequately. 

"Oxfam should have reported the matter to the Haitian authorities," Goldring told lawmakers.

"It was not for Oxfam to decide whether a crime had been committed... that was the wrong decision."

TIP OF THE ICEBERG?

Oxfam had made public Monday its 2011 report into the episode, revealing that three staff had physically threatened a witness in the prostitution investigation.

The report, compiled in the year after the workers were deployed to Haiti, found that a total of seven staff were accused of using prostitutes at an Oxfam-funded residence.

Four staff were fired for gross misconduct and three others, including then country director Roland Van Hauwermeiren, were allowed to quit.

Stephen Twigg, chair of the international aid committee hearing the testimony Tuesday, was blunt in his assessment. 

"Demonstrably, you have got to get your house in order," he told its leadership.

As part of its broader probe into sexual misconduct in the sector, the panel also questioned Kevin Watkins, chief executive of Save the Children UK.

He revealed tentative figures that the charity dealt with 193 cases of "child safeguarding" issues in 2016, leading to 53 full investigations, 20 case referrals to police and 11 staff dismissals.

"The difficult thing to know in these circumstances is whether you're catching the tip of the iceberg or whether you're catching the iceberg itself," Watkins said.

The BBC reported on Tuesday that one of Watkins' predecessors left the charity while facing three complaints of inappropriate behavior towards female staff.

Former CEO Justin Forsyth was accused in 2015 of sending inappropriate texts and making comments on what female staff were wearing.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Richest 62 people own same as half world's population - Oxfam

LONDON - The wealthiest 62 people now own as much as half the world's population, some 3.5 billion people, as the super-rich have grown richer and the poor poorer, an international charity said on Monday.

The wealth of the richest 62 people has risen by 44 percent since 2010, while the wealth of the poorest 3.5 billion fell 41 percent, Oxfam said in a report released ahead of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Almost half the super-rich individuals are from the United States, 17 from Europe, and the rest from countries including China, Brazil, Mexico, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

"World leaders' concern about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action - the world has become a much more unequal place and the trend is accelerating," Oxfam International's executive director, Winnie Byanima, said in a statement accompanying the report.

"We cannot continue to allow hundreds of millions of people to go hungry while resources that could be used to help them are sucked up by those at the top," Byanima added.

About $7.6 trillion of individuals' wealth sits in offshore tax havens, and if tax were paid on the income that this wealth generates, an extra $190 billion would be available to governments every year, Gabriel Zucman, assistant professor at University of California, Berkeley, has estimated.

As much as 30 percent of all African financial wealth is held offshore, costing about $14 billion in lost tax revenues every year, Oxfam said, referring to Zucman's work.

This is enough money to pay for healthcare that could save 4 million children's lives a year, and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school, Oxfam said in its report.

"Multinational companies and wealthy elites are playing by different rules to everyone else, refusing to pay the taxes that society needs to function. The fact that 188 of 201 leading companies have a presence in at least one tax haven shows it is time to act," Byanima said.

Ensuring governments collect the taxes they are owed by companies and rich individuals will be vital if world leaders are to meet their goal to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030, one of 17 Sustainable Development Goals set in September, Oxfam said.

EXTREME POVERTY FALLING

The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen by 650 million since 1981, even though the global population grew by 2 billion in that time, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Much of this change has been because of the rise of China, which alone accounted for half a billion people moving out of extreme poverty.

Most of the world's poorest no longer live in the poorest countries, but in middle-income countries like India, the OECD said in a recent report.

The inequalities are partly to do with differences in income, especially between urban and rural areas, but also differences in access to healthcare, education and jobs, the OECD said.

"The figures suggest that the biggest causes of poverty are ... political, economic and social marginalization of particular groups in countries that are otherwise doing quite well," development economist Owen Barder is quoted as saying in the OECD report.

Barder is director for Europe at the Center for Global Development.

Although taxes and transfers help reduce income inequality in developed countries, these systems are less robust in many developing countries, according to the OECD.

An exception is Brazil, which makes payments to more than 13.3 million poor families on condition they enrol children in school and take part in health programs.

"That has helped to reduce rates of both child poverty as well as inequality," the OECD report said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com