Zero reports is not cause for celebration, it's cause for alarm

When I open the annual report of a large agency that says it works with millions of people in a brutal crisis, and I see the number "zero violations," I don't celebrate. I worry. I have spent years trying to understand why survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse stay silent, and what it would actually take to build a system they can trust. In a country shaped by years of war, where vulnerability multiplies and humanitarian organizations operate under constant pressure, I have come to believe that the real question is not whether abuse exists. It is whether survivors have a genuine path to speak up. This is the system I am trying to build in Ukraine: one that does not protect institutional reputations, but stands, without compromise, on the side of survivors. If the system doesn't see a person, it can't protect them.

Isolation as a gateway to abuse

In my work, I have learned that sexual exploitation and abuse is never about sexuality or desire. In 100% of cases, it is about the abuse of power. A humanitarian crisis already creates a huge gap on its own, between those who hold resources and access to help, and those who have lost everything. I don't see vulnerability as an inborn trait; it is created by the conditions that society, or a crisis, push people into.

To explain the inner block that keeps people silent, I often point to an everyday example familiar across Ukraine: the way English used to be taught here, with the focus on mistakes and judgement rather than practice. That same shame, moved into the realm of safety and rights, becomes lethal. Fear of stigma or of being rejected by one's own community, for instance, the fear of a person from the LGBTQ+ community that their relatives will turn their backs on them, is, in my experience, the best fuel there is for an abuser.

Add intersectionality on top, and risk factors do not simply add up; they multiply. An internally displaced person living with a disability who is also part of the LGBTQ+ community faces isolation that climbs steeply. If that person encounters hints of exploitation in exchange for basic help, where do they turn? Are our hotlines even set up for people who cannot hear or see? That is why I insist: prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse without real inclusion is a fiction.

Prevention built into design, not bolted on

One of the biggest problems I see in this sector is the "silo approach," where each actor, housing, education, protection, digs its own closed tunnel. I'm convinced that prevention cannot be added to a development programme at the last minute to satisfy a donor; it has to be built into the architecture of a project from the design stage.

Wherever resources and new positions of power appear, so do new dependencies. If microbusiness grants or retraining programmes have unclear selection criteria, a single grant manager can end up with sole power over who receives help, creating a direct risk of coercion. If an institutional building is designed without inclusion specialists, the result can be toilets or showers that are not adapted for wheelchair users, forcing a person with a disability to depend on someone else for basic needs. Any forced, unregulated dependency in a crisis, in my view, is a potential opening for abuse.

My goal is to make sexual exploitation and abuse risk assessment as routine as a financial audit, shifting from a "protection in a crisis" mindset to a "safe development" one, where every person knows that a job or social assistance is their right, not a favour owed to whoever manages it.

The MSF case: transparency as strength

When Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced that it had investigated cases of sexual exploitation and abuse within its own organization and dismissed 18 staff, many in the sector read it as a blow to its reputation. I read it as exactly the opposite.

When I open the annual report of a big agency that says it works with millions of people in a brutal crisis, and I see the number "zero violations," that's not a reason to celebrate. It's a reason to worry. Across a million beneficiaries in extreme conditions, an absolute zero is statistically impossible: either a perfect world has been built, or

walls of silence have been built instead, walls that keep survivors' voices from reaching the top. What MSF did, in my view, was not a reputational crisis but a sign of institutional maturity: proof that its reporting mechanisms genuinely work, and that zero tolerance does not mean the absence of incidents. It means an uncompromising response when they occur.

Burnout and the normalization of violence

The hardest day-to-day challenge I face in Ukraine is the burnout of the whole system after years of war. Under constant shelling, the mind adapts and attention narrows to survival, which pushes us into "firefighting mode": drop off aid and move on, because there is already a new crisis in the next region.

I believe responding to cases matters, but by the time an investigation opens, the harm is already done. Prevention, by contrast, is the long game, systemic, often invisible, and slow, and it means building a culture in which every humanitarian worker understands that the aid they distribute is not theirs to hand out from a position of power, but a resource people are entitled to. Toward communities, I repeat this message constantly: all aid is free, and no one has the right to demand anything in return, no services, no hints at intimacy, no special treatment, not even silence about problems.

A national network, not isolated efforts

This work is now moving, with my colleagues, to a new systemic level. The PSEA Network has rolled out across Ukraine at scale and already counts more than 200 members. It is not just a coordination platform on paper but a locally rooted ecosystem, co-chaired by the Ukrainian Foundation for Public Health together with World Vision International, combining international resources with the expertise of professionals who know each community from the inside.

When more than 200 organizations line up behind the same safety standards, the result is a dense net of prevention, response, and support — not scattered attempts at protection, but a proper national accountability system.

I believe effective protection from sexual exploitation and abuse requires real inclusion for people with disabilities, minorities and LGBTQ+ communities; development programmes designed from the outset with these risks in mind; institutions willing to investigate and be transparent about wrongdoing, as MSF did; and an approach centred, without compromise, on survivors rather than on any organization's reputation or funding.

The question I want us to stop asking

For the system to work at full strength, I believe there has to be a fundamental turn toward a victim-centred approach as an iron rule: the interests, safety and

confidentiality of the person who has been exploited come before any organization's interests. No one should have to fight to be believed.

In our society, there's still this question that comes up far too often: "Why did he/she/they stay silent all that time?" Our shared job is to make sure we forget that question for good. Instead, those of us working as PSEA focal points should be asking ourselves every day: what do we have to change in the system today, so that people can speak up openly and honestly, without the slightest fear?

What needs to happen now?

Ukraine's PSEA Network remains open to humanitarian and development organizations, donors and community groups willing to put this principle into practice. For me, that means three concrete commitments: building sexual exploitation and abuse risk assessments into every project from the design stage, not as an afterthought; making reporting channels genuinely accessible to people with disabilities and minority communities; and treating openness about wrongdoing, not silence, as the real measure of an organization's integrity.

What I have learned through years of working on this in Ukraine is a lesson I believe extends well beyond our borders: no "zero incidents" figure should reassure anyone in a system operating at scale. On the contrary, it should raise questions about who is not being heard. The choice is not between protecting an institution's reputation and protecting survivors. It is between a system that looks safe on paper and one that actually is. Every organization working in Ukraine has a role in building the second kind, and I intend to keep pushing for it.

Vitalii Zakharchuk, UN Ukraine RCO Senior National PSEA Coordinator