We demand of Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of UNICEF and appointed global champion of Discrimination and Harassment of Female Aid Workers, to actively realize a One-Stop-Shop where female aid workers in the UN and NGO system can access first-line legal, medical and psychological care when experiencing harassment and abuse in the humanitarian workplace-- a phenomenon which HWN and its partners have determined to be pervasive and persistent.

We additionally demand that this One-Stop-Shop operate independently to ensure an impartial and confidential service, and that its operating costs be co-shared by the IASC membership. The platform would maintain an independent, anonymized record of cases and their locations to be used to detect, in real-time, hotspots of concern and to ensure policies conducive to a safe workplace for the tens of thousands of women working in the humanitarian aid industry.

Reports from Humanitarian Women’s Network (HWN, 2016), Report the Abuse (2017) and Tufts University (2017) show that women humanitarian actors are facing high levels of sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace. Top line results of the HWN’s survey show that out of a sample of 1,005 women working in the humanitarian industry, nearly 50 per cent of respondents report having been touched in an unwanted way and 4 per cent report rape by a male colleague.

WE DEMAND A DIFFERENCE. WE DEMAND A DEFENSE.