The Oxfam scandal is the start of the charities’ MeToo moment

It would be interesting, wouldn’t it, to sit in on the meeting today between Oxfam executives and Penny Mordaunt, International Development Secretary, who has got off to a cracking start in her job by giving short shrift to the weaselly equivocations by Oxfam after the sex scandals involving its country director and other staff in Haiti and now Chad. But the intelligent money must be on a MeToo rush of individuals recalling what they’ve seen in other charities, in other countries, on exactly the same lines. My husband worked for a British charity in receipt of lots of US government money during and after the conflict in Kosovo. His surprise about the latest revelations was merely in that they suggested there was something unusual for aid workers and UN staff to have recourse to prostitutes, though he was talking about aid workers generally rather than his own charity. In Kosovo, they weren’t propositioning actual recipients of aid during the conflict, but they certainly paid for sex locally and in conveniently adjoining states.