Young, unaccompanied, and male: the words that spell unimaginable dangers for boys uprooted by violence and crisis.
Guest article by Rasha Abousalem – 10 April 2023
Few things are more despicable than taking sexual advantage of vulnerable children. And yet, this is increasingly evident in situations of displacement due to conflicts and crises. According to the Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Conflict Tracker, there are 27 ongoing conflicts worldwide. The United Nations estimates that over 100 million people are displaced worldwide, of which some 40% are children (i.e. under 18 years).
The sexual exploitation of vulnerable people fleeing from catastrophe is a lucrative market. The risk does not subside on finding refuge because of the chaotic and unprotected nature of many humanitarian spaces. Refugee camps, in particular, give a false sense of safety.
UNHCR estimates that 22% of the world’s refugees, roughly 6.6 million people, live in camps – 4.5 million in “official” and 2 million in “self-settled” camps. Unaccompanied and separated children, regardless of gender, face huge risks in such settings which often provide inadequate child safety or care. Criminals know that refugees exist on the unprotected fringes of society and take full advantage of their vulnerability. Because really, who is truly watching?
In January 2016, I led a humanitarian and medical team for Global First Responder (GFR) to Calais, France to assist the thousands of refugees stranded near the English Channel. It was an organisational nightmare with the French government unwilling to help and making life difficult for the refugees in every way possible.
Countless refugees walked around in flip flops, their toes blue in the wintry slush and mud. The conditions were so deplorable that the camp earned the nickname of “The Jungle,” where only the strongest survived. There was no official security in the camp. An MSF medical centre on the outskirts and several small well-intentioned aid groups worked informally inside the camp.
Crime was rampant and made the camp dangerously unpredictable, especially at night. As a woman, I was forewarned about the risks. In fact, sexual assault was so common that aid teams were instructed to leave by dusk. The risks also made it almost impossible for refugee women to venture out at night to use the toilet. A single Syrian mother of two youngsters told me she would stay awake through the night to guard her children just in case someone tried to break into their caravan. Rather than risk being raped en route to the toilet during the night she urinated in a pot inside her camper.
Yet they were not the only ones at-risk – but why did it sound as if they were? In the European refugee context, boys comprise roughly between 90-95% of unaccompanied children. In the Jungle, my only interactions with unaccompanied children were boys – boys who were lost and afraid but considered to have full agency over their circumstances simply because of their gender. There was no official organisational oversight of them i.e. nobody knew how many of them roamed the camp. Boys as young as eight years of age fended for themselves, extracting whatever food and shelter they could from the cruelty around them.
I was told by several – barely teenage – boys, that there were several “other” boys coerced into exchanging sexual favours for drugs, food, protection, or shelter. It was always the other boy though, and never the one I was currently speaking with.
I was determined to learn more, but this was difficult without jeopardising the safety of those I spoke with. As luck had it, I befriended a British doctor who regularly worked in the camp and had earned the confidence of the refugees. They knew him, but better still, the organised crime groups within the camp also trusted him. He knew I was interested in learning more and advised that the best way was from the criminal heads.
One night he asked me to stay behind after the rest of the team left. As long as I was with him, my safety was assured. Several gang members confirmed that many alone boys had been forced by adults to become addicted to drugs and alcohol, and thus more compliant victims. They were quite forthcoming with their experiences and even provided the prevailing tariff for sex with boys as young as eight years of age: $7 for oral sex and $11 for intercourse. Relatively cheap acts that came at great cost to victims who developed life-long health dysfunctions and addictions.
It is well-known that a lack of effective protection for forcibly displaced peoples allows abusers to operate with impunity. However, services for high-risk females groups, although inadequate, have gained growing recognition. This has helped to expose their struggles during crises. Unfortunately, the minimal research on boys suggests that males are continuously overlooked as vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation. Especially as boys roam more freely than girls and that heightens their risks accordingly.
When I first started researching this area, I was surprised to receive sceptical or negative – and even hostile – feedback from other humanitarians, researchers and agency officials who tended to view males as a trivially small proportion of the abused victims. Some also saw this as competition for funds between female and male victims. When I posed concerns about the overlooked sexual exploitation of unaccompanied boys, many were quick to be defensive of female victims, while calling me “biased” or “sexist.” This reflects the oftentimes feminised one-sided dialogue on sexual exploitation.
Generations of neglect of women’s needs in humanitarian settings has unintentionally resulted in “gender” often becoming synonymous with female-specific concerns. This has meant little discussion on the male victims of sexual violence. The perverse consequence is that boys get repeatedly excluded from SGBV prevention efforts. This is not helped by the paucity of data, research, and programmes for male victims that leaves field workers and organisations ill-informed on the risks and needs faced by boys and young men in displaced camp settings.
A 2019 study by UNHCR concluded that the “risk of sexual and gender-based violence against boys is a particular blind spot” in the humanitarian context. Such ignorance translates into inadequate field practices that increase the isolation and vulnerability of boys who are then further discouraged from seeking proper care.
The increasing use of gender-neutral language limits perspectives and eventually translates into problematic field practices. Even when we refer to “children,” the implications are that girls are our primary concern because females are undoubtedly very vulnerable in crises. For males, most research emphasis has been on conflict or post-conflict conditions and tends to highlight adult victims, while research around boys is narrowed around labour exploitation, such as in mining and fishing, or their use as child soldiers.
This topic must be brought out of the shadows. Not least because there are many more hidden male victims of rape and other sexual abuse and exploitation. They suffer alone in silence. This should be unnecessary in our day and age. Women, who have struggled so much to tackle their own abuse and exploitation have learnt so much in the process. They must extend the hand of understanding, compassion, and help to the boys and the men who are doubly victimized by their own sense of shame when they get abused in a world where toxic masculinity is a dominant societal norm.
At the same time, humanitarian workers must also overcome their own discomfort around talking on this matter. They must recognise that prejudiced, sexist, and misguided narratives should have no place in modern humanitarian practice.
Proclaiming “zero tolerance” policies around sexual and gender-based violence is good but when boys and men are left behind, it is the cause of women and girls that also suffers. We need more gender solidarity. Writing reports is one thing, but implementing real-world approaches is another. Organisations can talk the talk, but it’s time to walk the walk.
