The World Health Organization has recently made a significant attempt to extend its health control over global political objectives; this commitment, meantime, does not appear to extend to regulating staff behavior.
The Associated Press agency obtained access to an internal WHO report that revealed that about 100 women from the Democratic Republic of the Congo would have received $250 apiece as compensation for sexual abuse they endured at the hands of the organization's staff between 2018 and 2020.
According to the news agency, Gaya Gamhewage, the head of the organization's prevention and response to sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment, wrote the report in March of last year. The scandal first surfaced in September 2021, when an independent commission of inquiry found that hundreds of local women had been sexually abused by dozens of WHO employees between 2018 and 2020, when the organization was in the Congo fighting the Ebola virus.
According to the Gamhewage report, 104 women have received the pitiful sum of $250 in compensation thus far, but because many of them remain unidentified, the figure may well be far higher. A negligible sum, given that, as the Associated Press pointed out, this amount per victim is only $19 more per day than Gamhewage herself would have received during her visit to the Congo and even less than the costs of a single day for some UN employees working in the capital.
To make matters worse, Gamhewage would have encountered a maltreated mother who would have given birth to a child with a deformity that needs special care, incurring additional costs for the young mother in one of the world's poorest nations, according to an internal WHO report obtained by the Associated Press. Not just. Getting compensated wouldn't even be that simple, according to the AP. In fact, in order to get the funds, women must finish training programs designed to assist them in beginning income-generating ventures, as per the WHO.
Speaking up on the issue was Paula Donovan, co-director of the Code Blue campaign, which aims to end the impunity that United Nations personnel appear to enjoy for sexual misconduct. Donovan tells AP that it is inconceivable to entice women with financial incentive for acts of sexual assault.