Haiti could expel Oxfam if allegations of sexual misconduct against the British charity prove to be true, a senior government official said.
“If there has indeed been an infraction … I will not hesitate to revoke Oxfam’s right to operate in Haiti,” Aviol Fleurant, Haiti’s minister of planning and external cooperation, told CNN in an interview Friday in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Fleurant is in charge of the oversight of aid agencies.
Oxfam’s leaders are accused of attempting to cover up the behavior of some senior staff members while in the Caribbean nation in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake. The aid workers — including the Oxfam country director at the time, Roland van Hauwermeiren — are accused of turning a villa rented by the organization into a makeshift brothel.
The charity also faces allegations that its staff used sex workers in the African nation of Chad in 2006
“If Oxfam is found (guilty) of any wrongdoing and also guilty of diverting funds (to pay for sex) and if the leaders at the time were also to be found guilty of sexual crimes, both will pay,” Fleurant said.
Oxfam hasn’t denied the accusations against its staff members but denied a cover-up, saying it launched a swift internal investigation after becoming aware of the allegations. Four people were fired and another three resigned, including van Hauwermeiren, the charity said.
In an open letter this week to a broadcaster in his native Belgium, van Hauwermeiren acknowledged his behavior was unacceptable.
“I myself, indeed I am not perfect, I am not a saint, a man of flesh and blood, and have made mistakes (not easy to admit), and I am deeply ashamed,” he wrote in the letter.
Van Hauwermeirn admitted he had intimate relations with a woman in Haiti, but denied allegations that he paid for sex in the villa the charity had rented for him in the wake of the 2010 earthquake.
