The Survey of UN Personnel on Standards of Conduct and Behaviour was launched in July to analyze the perspectives of UN staff and related personnel regarding the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse.
This annual survey serves as a tool to assess the awareness amongst United Nations staff regarding the prohibitions surrounding sexual exploitation and abuse, their responsibilities in preventing and addressing such issues, and to examine the influence of training.
It also examines the understanding of reporting procedures, the consequences associated with engaging in such behaviour, and their perceptions of the leadership environment within their respective duty stations.
The 2023 survey had a high level of participation. There were 46,564 respondents (an increase of 26 per cent compared to last year) from 168 locations and 94 entities, including peacekeeping missions, special political missions, and the Secretariat, as well as agencies, funds, and programmes.
This has provided a wealth of data that will be invaluable for improving our system-wide response to sexual exploitation and abuse.
The entity and country-specific results of the preventing sexual exploitation and abuse survey have been shared with the respective heads of agencies and/or respective Resident Coordinator. It includes a multiple-year trend analysis across the six years of the survey (2018-2023) as well as the disaggregation per location or entity.
In addition, this year’s survey incorporated a gender perspective, as gender inequality is one of the root causes of sexual exploitation and abuse.
We would like to extend our gratitude to the Business Transformation and Accountability Division Team of the Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance for their support in preparing the reports.
We hope the results will be useful in guiding activities to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse in your entity or in your respective country of operation, particularly in preparing the 2024 action plans and the 2023 annual certification letters.
Learn more about the UN response to sexual exploitation and abuse on iSeek.
