Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent assessment his Department has made of the accuracy of reports of sexual abuse by aid workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the 2018 Ebola outbreak; and what steps his Department is taking to help tackle sexual abuse by aid workers during the covid-19 pandemic.

Sexual exploitation and abuse are completely abhorrent. We regularly assess all of our partners against the highest safeguarding standards and expect thorough investigations whenever allegations are made. We take these recent allegations in DRC very seriously; there is no reason to believe they are not credible. The World Health Organization and other agencies have confirmed that they are urgently investigating. We will scrutinise their findings closely and are in close contact with them.

The UK is committed to driving up safeguarding standards across the aid sector, during the COVID-19 pandemic and at all times. We're working with partners to: prevent sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment; listen to those affected; respond sensitively but robustly when harm or allegations of harm occur; and learn from every case. We will continue to demand the highest standards of our partners and hold ourselves to those same high standards.

In March, the UK commissioned specific guidance for staff and external partners about managing the heightened risk of sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment during the COVID-19 pandemic. This and a wide range of other tools and guidance are on the Safeguarding Resource and Support Hub, which FCDO created last year