Why safeguarding matters in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations (Part I)
Safeguarding is often described as a non‑negotiable in humanitarian work: a core responsibility that protects the people organisations exist to serve. Yet despite decades of policy development, training, and public commitments, sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) continues to surface across the sector. In June 2026, several media outlets reported that Doctors Without Borders (MSF) acknowledged allegations that some of its own staff had engaged in misconduct, including sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse of Sudanese refugees in 2024. Cases like this are shocking, but they are not isolated. Many allegations never reach the public eye at all.
Understanding why safeguarding matters begins with recognising the profound harm caused when it fails. Safeguarding means protecting people’s health, wellbeing, dignity, and human rights, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse, and neglect. In humanitarian settings, this extends to preventing and responding to harm caused by personnel themselves. Aid workers hold significant authority; they distribute vital resources, control access to services, and operate in contexts where communities face acute vulnerability. When this power is misused, the consequences can be devastating.
For victim‑survivors, the harm is not only the violation itself but the trauma that follows, shaping emotional, social, and economic realities long after the incident. In some contexts, abuses have left women pregnant and unsupported, forcing them to raise children alone and in poverty. The UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which operated from 2004 to 2017, became one of the most notorious examples, with peacekeepers exploiting girls and women and then disappearing back to their home countries, leaving families without recognition or support. These experiences create lifelong barriers: disrupted education, limited employment opportunities, deepened hardship, and the stigma attached to both the abuse and the child. The betrayal of trust is profound, and it can make survivors reluctant to seek help or engage with humanitarian organisations or peacekeepers again.
Safeguarding failures damage organisations too. They weaken credibility, strain relationships with communities, and create unsafe environments for people already in need. The impact is not only reputational; it strikes at the core purpose of humanitarian action. If the sector’s work is rooted in protecting life and dignity, then safeguarding cannot be viewed as an optional extra. It is a necessary expression of the very principles that shaped humanitarian action from the beginning.
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