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United Kingdom aid chief warns charities after Oxfam sex scandal

ReutersOxfam is being threatened with having its government funding cut as a result of the scandal.

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It comes in the wake of the Oxfam sex abuse scandal which has rapidly escalated since revelations were first published last Friday.

Staff reportedly used prostitutes in Chad at the charity’s staff house.

48-year-old Brit Minnie Driver, who has supported the charity over the past two decades, said in a statement: “I am nothing short of horrified by the allegations against Oxfam International”.

A Catholic charity has sacked a worker after it emerged he had been accused of sexually exploiting vulnerable people in Haiti while working for Oxfam.

So he was not surprised when reports emerged last week senior staff from Oxfam hired prostitutes for parties in a Haitian villa rented by the organisation following a devastating natural disaster in 2010.

“Unless you report every serious incident or allegation, no matter how damaging to your reputation – we can not be partners”, Britain’s International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt told a conference in Stockholm, according to extracts of her speech released by her ministry.

Prostitution is a crime in Haiti, but it was not entirely clear what other crimes the Oxfam officials may have committed.

“Some have, disgracefully, weaponised this appalling scandal by launching a full-frontal assault on United Kingdom aid”. “It was not just the processes and procedures of that organization that were lacking but moral leadership”.

“I don’t know what their motivation was for behaving the way they did … but they did absolutely the wrong thing”, she said.

Lawrence issued her statement as Oxfam executives were responding to a demand for full information from the British government’s Department for International Development (DFID) which has threatened to cancel its multi-million dollar funding package.

“We are meeting with the Charity Commission this week to assure ourselves that appropriate action has been taken with all the safeguarding material in their possession and to improve standards”, a spokesperson for the agency said.

Many Oxfam New Zealand supporters view it as an Oxfam Great Britain scandal, she said.

He added: “Let it be clear to all of Haiti’s global partners, if their personnel exploit or do wrong to our citizens when they are supposed to be “aiding” them, we will not be inclined to tolerate it and we will not tolerate it”.

“They’re in a position of power, where they get to dictate the terms under which change happens and [according to] what they perceive poverty eradication should look like in that particular country”.

Scandal-hit British charity Oxfam was reeling yesterday after fresh claims of sexual assault and rape, this time between aid workers in South Sudan.

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Oxfam UK says: “All have helped us raise awareness about the vital difference we are making to the lives of men, women and children around the world”.

Minnie Driver seen in Los Angeles in September has resigned from her role as an Oxfam celebrity ambassador as the aid organization sought to address allegations that senior staff members working in crisis zones paid for sex among the desperate people