A friend of mine who has worked in the overseas aid sector for 20 years recently suggested that the only reason this is a story now is because the government is working towards cutting the overseras aid budget. It’s an interesting thought.

There’s a lot of social media sentiment that agrees with your friend.

The Times had the story for months.

Being generous… the FT exposé on the Presidents Club probably fed into the timing of this…

…but no doubt at all that this failure by Oxfam (and other charity organisations) is lighter fluid for the “let’s look after our own” agenda.

Also suggestions that part of a kick back against Oxfam’s inequality report –

https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2017/01/eight-people-own-same-wealth-as-half-the-world

I don’t know, only last month JRM was lauding the Trussell Trust as being a wonderful thing and how they would do all they could to help it by creating as many impoverished people as possible…

Cut the overseas aid budget completely.

Put the money into the NHS.

It’s always better to have a collection of news worthy items that you can control and use to keep people in line. You do run the risk of having to throw one out early if you get caught up with things like Rolf Harris or Weinstien etc. but this was a good stick to beat charities with. Somebody will be very proud of themselves for sitting on something and not forcing any action or investigation for nearly 7 years. They are as guilty as those within the charity who covered it up.

Cut the overseas aid budget completely.

Put the money into the NHS.

https://fullfact.org/economy/uk-spending-foreign-aid/

0.7% GDP or £13.4bn

NHS

£116.4bn so it would help but no magic bullet

Aid is also in line with a UN commitment for all developed nations (since 1970) to give 0.7% to aid – the UK only managed that in 2013.

If you want some easier pickings for savings with zero impact on people try starting with some more obvious ones

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/nhs-wales-spends-100k-year-1802523

Cut the overseas aid budget completely.

Put the money into the NHS

Yeah. Nice idea, will never happen under a Tory government.

zero impact on people

There may be good reason for using water coolers, rather than tap water, in some large buildings full of people who may be more at risk from exposure to waterborne diseases.

Put the money into the NHS

Yeah. Nice idea, will never happen under a Tory government.

Remember there’s always that £350Million a week Uncle Boris promised as a Brexit Bonus.

>Cut the overseas aid budget completely.

>Put the money into the NHS.

Could just fund both. Austerity is a political choice, not a fiscal necessity.

Well there is no magic money tree.

Except when the DUP need to be bought
or
When tax reforms prove to be hugely unpopular and just get dropped
or
When billions of money is just created out of thin air and given to banks in the form of QE

Back to the OP I think this is nothing more sinister than fitting in with theme of sexual exploitation stories that started back with Harvey Weinstien.

TBH if Oxfam had handled it better, then the story wouldn’t have had too much traction, but some poor PR blunders have kept them in the headlines.

They tried to cover up how serious the issues were and as we all know, its the cover up that gets you. The Times reporter on this has been working on this for some time.
You can argue thats there is a political thing going on (and there maybe) but if you are going to be the good people in bad situations then you need to act like it. Even when it hurts sometimes. I really hope this does not undermines the work that they and other charities do, we need them.

Lets not forget ‘oversees aid’ is as much about giving kick-backs for contracts as feeding the hungry.

Anyway – to my mind there’s a few reasons – firstly whilst it happened in 2011, but a few arseholes being arseholes whilst they work for an organisation does not make the organisation an arsehole, but proving they tried to cover it up does, that happened later I believe.

Secondly, cutting over-seas aid, by any means pleases the insular types like Gary_C so it’s political – not to mention Oxfam is more cosy with Labour than the Tories so it’s a win-win for the Tory supporting media..

Thirdly from an entertainment point of view – sexual exploitation is big news at the moment – it wasn’t in 2011.

The actual money involved – £31m a year I believe ‘only’ equates to 7.5% of Oxfam’s UK income and 0.004% of total government spending. It won’t kill Oxfam, not save the UK fortunes.

The real shame of it is that the huge, vast majority of Oxfam does great work both here and in the rest of the world – it’s the people they could have helped that suffer because of the cover-up and resulting political booting.

Lets not forget ‘oversees aid’ is as much about giving kick-backs for contracts as feeding the hungry.

There is also its uses as a subsidy for companies in the donor countries. Been some real rubbish provided to countries which just happened to prop up some key company.

The story does seem to being used as a handy attack on the overseas aid program and a nice distractor from other affairs. Although Oxfam certainly do have some questions to answer.

[Quote]If you want some easier pickings for savings with zero impact on people try starting with some more obvious ones[/quote]

You’re going to need a lot of really long hosepipes to get water to all those ambulances and police cars. £100k over how many vehicles over how many shifts is sod all per patient (assuming the crews already have their own bottles).

Agreed, there is always a story behind the story, and this one is particularly vile and pernicious. What amazes me is that there aren’t more people asking this exact question! It’s soooo obvious!!!

If Oxfam were a company some of the apologists on here would be outraged. The main thing here is that Oxfam dealt with an issue badly and with a cover up, that is the real problem for them to deal with. Those bad right wingers of those moaning left wingers can take a side but you cannot excuse the exploitation that went on and the threatening of witnesses involved. Oxfam’s only way out of this is to get it all out in the open as soon as possible and not be seen to be continuing some sort of damage limitation exercise. It may be painful in the short term but in the medium and long term they’ll be better run and perhaps learn a few lessons.

I’ll not stop using there shop or giving as and when I feel its right.

If Oxfam were a company some of the apologists on here would be outraged.

I’m not sure I’ve understood precisely what is alleged to have happened. What specifically is supposed to have gone on? I heard it was sleeping with prostitutes but did it go further? There was mention of child abuse and paedophilia at one point but that line of accusation seems to have been dropped and then there is this new suggestion of bullying and intimidation of witnesses that went from ‘Oxfam were worried that this might have happened’ when it was reported at 7am to ‘it definitely happened’ by 12pm.

Does anyone know beyond doubt what happened?

The Mash pretty much nails the type of people who think the overseas aid budget should be cut…

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/we-need-to-look-after-our-own-first-say-people-who-would-never-help-anyone-20150907101741

GT – the undercurrent to all this seems to be that certain Oxfam staff seem to have gone a bit Kurtz/Heart of Darkness and gone lording it as the big chief/great white hunter over the impoverished local population who they were meant to be there to help

So the term ‘prostitution’ is a bit of a broad brush (to say the least) to cover what was lobbing some totally desperate impoverished women their loose change to do things to them they maybe weren’t wholeheartedly enthusiastic about

its about the abuse of power and trust. So just the same kind of issues as the Barry Burnell thing in the news today really. It’s a common theme

Just goes to show that no organisation is immune to corruption and abuse of power. Wether it is a charitable organisation, government one or private one – they’re all as corrupt as each other. I’m in favour of our overseas aid we have to realise that we are only as developed as we are at the expense of some other nations so we have a moral duty to help them out, and besides, having more developed nations in the world is good for global trade which is the most powerful and successful mechanism for tackling poverty known to man – in fact the only successful mechanism. Some parts of the rest of the world are truly impoverished, we go on about poverty in the UK, but it’s nothing compared to what is going on in some countries and they need external help to try to pull themselves out of a vicious cycle. My only problem with the current overseas aid set up is some of the things it is spent on. We should be using it as leverage to influence some beneficiary countries to change their ways, instead its just letting some of them off the hook.

I really don’t believe we are ‘positioning’ ourselves to pull out of the overseas aid, but like many things we spend our money on, it is in dire need of reform and doing differently.

“Could just fund both. Austerity is a political choice, not a fiscal necessity.”

True, but the government of the day also has a responsibility to run the nations finances in a sensible, sustainable and responsible way. Austerity has drastically slashed the deficit and we are in a far better position for it, but now we’re staring down the barrel of interest rates rising, there is going to be more pressure to address what’s left of the deficit so we can start to reduce our rising debt. We already spend more on the interest on the national debt than we do on the NHS, and that is at near zero interest rates so as interest rates start to rise there will be less around for the NHS and everything else, and if anyone thinks that is a sensible or acceptable situation then they need their heads reading.

What should Oxfam have done better?

What should Oxfam have done better?

it might just be me, but if you have an allegation of employees having sex with underage prostitutes, then I would expect some form of police involvement rather than relying on an internal investigation.

In the case of Oxfam it would appear they deafaulted to the proven worst case scenario…..

what would the Catholic Church, circa 1998 have done?

always a winner

From what we can tell – Oxfam haven’t published their report yet, all we have are unsubstantiated rumours – there was no evidence to support the underage allegations. We don’t even know if any were made. Those involved were open about what had happened so from Oxfam’s perspective there was no reason to doubt them.

I know human rights are very unfashionable at the moment but “Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.”

Haiti was a country with millions homeless (over 10% of the population), a cholera outbreak and limited sanitation and basic services. In scale terms that’s as if something had flattened every city in the UK except London. It wasn’t as if this was happening in Oxford. It is just possible that the local Police were a bit busy.

It’s easy to criticise from home on a sofa, or a parliament committee room, but I doubt most people here have the faintest idea what the local situation was and I suspect would have done the same as Oxfam did. Sorry, but people with 20-20 hindsight and a holier than thou attitude irritate me.

Today’s committee hearings might well prove me wrong, of course.

“Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.”

Not relevant. Oxfam was their employer, not a prosecuting authority. For Oxfam this was a matter involving possible/likely employee gross misconduct, reports of the possible commission of acts which might have been criminal offences under Haitian law and UK law (child sexual abuse ‘tourism’), and the consequent potential for such allegations (whether proven true or not) to damage the organisation and severely undermine its ability to do the good work that it undoubtedly does.

Charitable organisations like Oxfam often occupy a difficult position in many undeveloped countries, and they need to be seen and believed to operate with absolute integrity to maintain the good will amongst the leaders and people of the host country that is essential to them. For individuals working for Oxfam to exploit their position and relative wealth to take advantage of impoverished people in the midst of a humantarian crisis, gives an excuse to all dictators and corrupt third world governments to throw such organisations out of their country, when it may be only the charities’ presence and observation of what is happening on the ground in the country that inhibits some of the worst abuses by dictators.

Major misbehaviour by charity workers also puts their colleagues at risk around the world where they are working in countries where some would similarly like to get rid of them, e.g. the murder by the pakistani Taliban of aid workers providing polio vaccinations.

I suspect the global community of aid workers, who are not sitting at home on a sofa but are working in difficult, unpleasant and often dangerous circumstances, are if anything even more critical of what happened and Oxfam’s actions at the time.

The big issues for me are

1. Why the cover up

2. Why no reporting to the police either back in the UK or in Hati

3. Why was Oxfam money / premises used

On a wider point I always struggle with the whole idea that any organisation such as oxfam, can call itself a charity when 75% of all its income comes from government and other quangos. Its actually a government contractor and at best a community interest company but calling it a charity is a fit of a falicy. If it had to rely on donations it would have gone bust years ago.