The IOM Regional Office Vienna, with the support of the Head of the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Vienna, set up an information booth in the Rotunda of the Vienna International Centre (VIC) on Wednesday, 14 December to promote the “Together We Say No to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse” campaign. 

The campaign is being run jointly with World Food Programme (WFP) and Translators Without Borders (TWB). 

Dozens of UN staff visited the booth, including  Deputy Director-General of UNOV Dennis Thatchaichawalit who expressed his pleasure on seeing the joint initiative being promoted in the heart of the VIC. 

Sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) is an extreme form of abuse of power causing untold harm to the most vulnerable and undermining the work of the entire international community. With such damage increasingly evident, humanitarian actors working across emergency, development and peace contexts are committed to ensuring that those in need can access assistance without fear of being sexually exploited or abused. Critical to these efforts is raising awareness on prevention of SEA (PSEA) among those engaged in humanitarian and development work at the frontline. 

IOM have therefore partnered with the World Food Programme (WFP) and Translators Without Borders (TWB) to develop the “PSEA at the Frontline” campaign targeting field-based workers who play a key role at the frontline and interact with beneficiaries and community populations on a daily basis.  

The agencies have created a multilingual package of simplified communication material, available in 22 languages – including highly illustrated print, audio and multimedia formats – to help provide frontline humanitarian and development workers with greater awareness of PSEA, to better recognize and report instances they witness or experience and to become strategic allies in its prevention. Selected print materials have also been tailored for the Ukraine response with adaptations available in Ukrainian, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Slovak. 

During the event, IOM provided USB sticks containing all the important materials and links. Participants were also directed to the website to obtain information in numerous languages for UN agencies and partners to utilise. 

For general information on PSEA at the Frontline, please contact wfp.psea@wfp.org and PSEA-SH@iom.int.