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Overseas aid workers ‘too scared’ to report sexual abuse and exploitation inflicted by colleagues on vulnerable people

MANY aid workers are “too scared” to report cases of sexual abuse and exploitation while working in developing countries in fear of losing their jobs, a Commons committee heard today.

Dr Miranda Brown told MPs that it was “just too dangerous” for aid workers, many of them junior staff on short-term contracts, to whistleblow when abuse is inflicted on vulnerable aid recipients — overwhelmingly women and children — by their colleagues.

She told the international development committee: “Aid workers know what is going on. They see it. But are not in power to report it.”

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