Sextortion: Corruption and Gender-Based Violence
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06 2020 SEXTORTION: CORRUPTION AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE Åsa Eldén, Dolores Calvo, Elin Bjarnegård, Silje Lundgren and Sofia Jonsson Sextortion: Corruption and Gender-Based Violence Åsa Eldén, Dolores Calvo, Elin Bjarnegård, Silje Lundgren and Sofia Jonsson Rapport 2020:06 till Expertgruppen för biståndsanalys (EBA) Acknowledgements Our first and warmest thanks go to our interviewees in Tanzania and Colombia who generously shared their knowledge, experiences and reflections on sextortion. We would also like to thank Nancy Hendry, Marwa Fatafta, Pilar Avello, Jenny Grönvall, Fredy Mora Gamez, Anna Collins Falk and Verena Knippel, the Embassy of Sweden in Dar es Salaam and Bogotá, and the thematic and geographic experts at Sida and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs whose support and competence have been of great importance for our study. A special thanks also to the participants of two workshops for valuable insights from different contexts. A reference group appointed by the Expert Group for Aid Studies, EBA, has closely followed our work: Johanna Förberg, Jenny Grönvall, Maria Stern and Anders Kompass. Thank you for sharing your expertise and providing thorough and fruitful feedback, from ideas via drafts to final report. Last but not least we want to thank the staff and expert group of EBA – in particular Sara Johansson de Silva, Eva Mineur, Lena Johansson de Chateau, Jan Pettersson, Helena Skagerlind and Nina Solomin - who have been wonderfully encouraging and supportive throughout, or in different stages of, the process. Please refer to the present report as: Eldén, Å., D. Calvo, E. Bjarnegård, S. Lundgren and S. Jonsson (2020), Sextortion: Corruption and Gender-Based Violence, EBA Report 2020:06, the Expert Group for Aid Studies (EBA), Sweden. This report can be downloaded free of charge at www.eba.se This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. ISBN 978-91-88143-60-0 Printed by Elanders Sverige AB Stockholm 2020 Cover design by Julia Demchenko Dr. Åsa Eldén has a PhD in Sociology from Uppsala University (2003). Her work covers a wide range of gender equality issues focusing on gender-based violence, and different arenas within and outside academia in Sweden, Turkey and internationally. She was the Lead/Senior Policy Specialist for Gender Equality at Sida and is the co- author of the EBA study “Swedish Aid in the Era of Shrinking Space – the Case of Turkey” (2018). Dr. Dolores Calvo has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Gothenburg (2013). She has done research on gender and gender mainstreaming, focusing on development policies at the EU level. She has also conducted research on women's collective action, clientelism and social exclusion in Latin America, and on trafficking and violence against women in Sweden. Dr. Elin Bjarnegård has a PhD in Political Science (2010) and is Associate Professor at Uppsala University. Her research focuses on gender, masculinities, violence, corruption and political parties. She is an experienced research project leader and is widely published in academic journals and is the co-author of the EBA study ”Putting Priority into Practice: Sida´s implementation of its Plan for Gender Integration” (2018). Dr. Silje Lundgren has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Uppsala University (2011). Her research deals with norms of gender and sexuality, gender-based violence and harassment, and how gendered hierarchies are strengthened in conditions of economic hardship and crisis. Silje Lundgren is currently the director of the Forum for Gender Studies and Equality at Linköping University. Dr. Sofia Jonsson has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Gothenburg (2019). In her post doc at the University of Bergen she explores the role of trust for online police collaboration to tackle human trafficking, and she has studied perpetrators’ incentives to traffic. Together with colleagues, Jonsson has developed a European survey on sex-buying and prostitution attitudes. Table of Contents Foreword by the EBA ................................................ 1 Sammanfattning....................................................... 3 Summary .................................................................. 9 Abbreviations ......................................................... 15 Introduction ........................................................... 16 Section 1: The study ............................................... 18 Overall aim .................................................................................... 18 Defining sextortion ...................................................................... 19 Between development agendas ................................................... 26 Material and method .................................................................... 32 Section 2: Review of existing knowledge, gaps, and dilemmas ................................................... 38 Introduction .................................................................................. 38 Gender, power, and corruption .................................................. 39 Sextortion as gendered corruption ............................................. 41 Focus on the perpetrator of sextortion ..................................... 44 Between legal frameworks: gender-based violence and corruption .............................................................................. 46 Sextortion from a gender-based violence perspective: power and coercion/consent .............................................. 49 Vulnerability, poverty, and coercion/consent .......................... 51 Concluding remarks ..................................................................... 53 Section 3: Case studies ........................................... 57 Introduction .................................................................................. 57 Tanzania ......................................................................................... 59 Colombia ........................................................................................ 87 Tanzania and Colombia: sextortion as concept and practice ................................................................................. 104 Section 4: Conclusions and recommendations ...... 108 Conclusions ................................................................................. 108 Recommendations ...................................................................... 111 References ............................................................ 116 Appendix 1 ............................................................ 126 Interviews, workshops, and consultations .............................. 126 Interview guide ............................................................................ 128 Previous EBA reports ............................................ 131 Foreword by the EBA Corruption and gender-based violence have long been established as two important, though distinct, areas of concern in international development cooperation. During the last few years, increasing international attention to cases of abuse of power and position in exchange for sexual favours in various contexts has highlighted how these phenomena may be interlinked. In 2008, the International Association of Women Judges coined the term ‘sextortion’ in order to recognize and render visible these forms of abuse. Given that sextortion simultaneously constitutes a form of corruption and gender-based violence – but fits neither definition perfectly – this phenomenon risks falling between two stools and remaining unaddressed. Whereas the concept of sextortion has existed for some years now, and Transparency International has picked up the term in its Global Corruption Barometer, it has remained largely absent in anti- corruption work as well as in development cooperation. Moreover, empirical knowledge about sextortion – where, how and to what extent it occurs and how it is perceived and dealt with – is very limited. The combination of conceptual, legal and empirical obscurity, the issue of perceived “consent” and the stigma associated with sextortion render victims vulnerable and often lead to impunity for perpetrators. This report addresses some of the knowledge gaps concerning sextortion by summarizing the existing knowledge, identifying gaps and presenting two case studies of the dynamics of sextortion in Tanzania and Colombia. The report concludes that sextortion is not only a gross violation of human rights in itself, but also hinders victims’ rights in other spheres as well as sustainable development at large. Sextortion deepens poverty and constitutes a greater risk for those living in poverty. In order to better combat sextortion in development cooperation, the authors stress the need to clearly define sextortion; link agendas on anti-corruption and sexual and gender-based violence, exploitation, abuse and harassment; promote awareness, policy and regulation at all levels; and ensure the allocation of adequate resources to this work. 1 I hope that this report will find its intended audience among decision- and policymakers at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Sida as well as actors in international development cooperation more broadly. In addition, the report should be of great value for readers in civil society, the research community and the general public interested in gender equality, gender-based violence and anti-corruption work.