Sexual exploitation and abuse of the people we assist is one of the most grievous ways the IFRC can fail in our mission. Our policies on Prevention and Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) and Child Safeguarding ensure we take every necessary step to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse against the people we support and respond adequately to those incidents we cannot prevent.

All of our staff undergo mandatory PSEA and child protection training and are obliged to report any incidents they have witnessed and cooperate fully with any investigation.

When concerns or allegations are raised, the IFRC has an unwavering commitment to taking a survivor-centred approach. This means we prioritize the needs of the survivor and support them at every stage of the reporting process. It means that every single report is properly heard and acted upon in a confidential way that respects the survivor’s wishes, rights and dignity and supports their recovery. It means treating survivors without judgement, bias or discrimination. And it means the safety and security of the survivor is our number one priority.

We are increasingly addressing protection, gender and inclusion issues in everything we do. For instance, ensuring our projects and services are gender-sensitive, protect people from sexual and gender-based violence and take into account the specific needs of persons with disabilities.

And through our community engagement and accountability (CEA) work, we integrate meaningful community participation in our projects. Doing so ensures the people we support are active participants in their own future and recovery and always feel comfortable sharing with us their needs, thoughts and concerns about our projects and services.

Our rules are clear: the IFRC does not tolerate any form of harassment, bullying, abuse or discrimination. One such incident is one incident too many.

All of our staff are bound by a Code of Conduct that sets out clear standards against these issues as well as the responsibility of all staff to report any concerns or suspicions regarding any violation. We deliver training on this Code of Conduct, including specialized training for managers.

We regularly engage our staff on our policies relating to harassment, exploitation and abuse to improve dialogue and information sharing. By meaningfully and extensively consulting our staff on these issues, we can ensure everyone feels included and has collective ownership of these policies.

Following broad consultation, and benchmarking with other International Organizations, in October 2021 we launched our new IFRC Secretariat Policy on the Prevention and Response to Workplace Harassment and Discrimination.

When staff members speak up to report reasonably held suspicions about a breach of our rules or alleged misconduct, they are shielded by our Whistleblower Protection policy. The IFRC has a zero tolerance policy to any form of retaliation against any such persons.

We perform background checks on all job applicants before an offer of employment is made. And we have joined the Inter-Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme, through which we are committed to systematically sharing information about misconduct with previous and potential employers. By doing so, we and our partners can prevent known abusers from moving between agencies with impunity.

The nature of our work supporting local humanitarian action by our 191 member National Societies brings with it inherent risks to our assets.

We regularly deliver services and programmes in very challenging environments—such as situations of conflict or in places affected heavily by disasters—and at an incredibly fast pace, to get support as quickly as possible to people who need it.

Because of this, we engage in thorough and strategic risk management across our organization. We are committed to preventing and dealing swiftly and appropriately with fraud, corruption and any other dishonest practices committed by our personnel or against the IFRC by our partners, contractors or suppliers.

To do so, we have put in place strong internal prevention mechanisms and controls at all managerial levels and locations in our organization—recognizing that fraud and corruption prevention and control is not a separate function and needs to be incorporated into all areas of our work.

All IFRC staff are bound by our Fraud and Corruption Prevention policy. We engage external auditors to provide independent scrutiny of our work and finances. And we also work to support National Societies to improve their own fraud and corruption policies, procedures and systems.

Through all of this work, we strive to reduce the risk of fraud and corruption to an absolute minimum and ensure that our services and support always reach their intended goal: to support the world’s most vulnerable communities.