“It’s Just How Things Are Done”: Social Ecologies of Sexual Violence in Humanitarian Aid

Increasing research on the humanitarian sector examines how its organizational cultures affect both aid outcomes and humanitarian workers’ private lives. The #MeToo movement and several public scandals have brought to light patterns of sexual violence in crisis zones perpetrated by humanitarian aid workers; surveys suggest rates of sexual assault within the humanitarian community comparable to, if not higher than, those on US college campuses. How do the conditions that produce sexual violence persist in a sector governed by strong, mission-centric principles, professional codes of conduct, and oversight? This article uses participant observation in Iraq and Uganda, in-depth interviews, and textural analysis to examine the social origins of sexual violence in humanitarian communities. It builds on studies of aid organizations to argue that the humanitarian sector operates similarly to a “total institution” (Goffman 1961). Then, it draws upon recent work on sexual violence to demonstrate how within-sector social ecologies and informal socialization practices create the conditions of possibility for sexual violence. It identifies two key factors that constitute the emergency aid world—sexual scripts and projects, and sector-specific sexual geographies—and argues that they produce conditions that facilitate sexual violence while labeling them “just how things are done.”