By A Staff Reporter
KATHMANDU, Dec. 3: The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has denied news reports that quoted a Bhutanese refugee as saying its officials were also involved in cases of sexual abuse in the refugee camps in Jhapa and Morang in east Nepal.
Talking to The Rising Nepal, media relations officer at the UNHCR’s country office Millicent Mutuli said that they had received complaints regarding sexual harassment by UNHCR officials. “But the special inspection team of the UNHCR which had visited the camps last month in this connection found that the allegations were baseless.”
After discovering that 18 aid workers – 16 of them Bhutanese refugees themselves, one police officer and an official working with the Refugee Coordination Council – had sexually exploited refugee women and girls, the UNHCR gave directives to the concerned agencies to dismiss them.
“The accused were involved in all the social service organisations associated with the camps except in the Nepal Red Cross Society,” a source told this reporter requesting anonymity. The UNHCR has not made public the name of the perpetrators. However, it is learnt that one of them was the ex-deputy director of the Refugee Coordination Unit.
“So far, the line agencies have dismissed all the accused, and we are trying to file cases against them so that the guilty could be duly punished according to Nepalese law,” said Millicent.
According to the UNHCR, the case of sexual abuse by the aid workers in Nepal was the second such incident that has occurred in the refugee camps around the world.
One similar case of sexual abuse by the aid workers had occurred in the West African countries of Guinea and Sierra Leone in the past.
Keeping in mind the growing number of complaints about sexual exploitation of women and children, the UNHCR has brought in seven professionals to protect the women and children and has developed various mechanisms to discourage and stop such activities from taking place in the future.
“We are running protection training programmes in the camps and have also developed a form which is distributed to the unhcr staff, representatives of the Women’s Forum, and to the Mother and Child Health Clinic. Everything is strictly monitored.
“However, our plan to visit each camp thrice a week has not materialised due to lack of field staff,” she said. The UNHCR has only four staff members in the field.