When Vulnerability Meets Power: Safeguarding in the International Aid and Development Sector

Recent crises relating to non-governmental aid organisations have brought into sharp focus the need for a greater understanding of the safeguarding challenges which the international aid and development sector faces, and how to respond to them in a consistent, systematic and effective way. This essential safeguarding guide provides insight to operational, organisational and cultural challenges within the international aid and development sector.

The book brings together carefully chosen key professionals who have extensive operational experience of addressing and responding to these issues. In a highly challenging environment, with multiple competing demands, this book is a clearly focused and accessible resource. It sets out what those leading in the field need to be aware of, what responses they need to make and how to maintain necessary change in the long term. In relation to each key issue, through its range of chapters, the book explores what the challenge is, what is current or suggested best practice and what future developments are needed.

It provides the sector with an accessible, authoritative and ultimately essential handbook for all those working in the international aid and development sector, whether they are practitioners, safeguarding specialists, senior leaders in governance roles or regulators. The emphasis is on facilitating sector-wide change, embedding best practice and encouraging work that effectively ensures the safety and wellbeing of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Having spent most of his career at the NSPCC, Marcus is now an independent Safeguarding and Sexual Abuse Consultant, consulting to organisations about the adequacy and effectiveness of their safeguarding processes and procedures, researching, publishing and providing training and presentations.

Since 2012 Marcus has worked with a wide range of organisations including the NSPCC, Save the Children International (SCI); Save the Children UK (SCUK); Oxfam; the Methodist Independent Schools Trust, the Cognita schools organisation, the Methodist Church, Ampleforth College and Abbey, Addenbrookes Hospital and Trinity College, Oxford. He is Chair of the Independent Safeguarding Panel at Ampleforth Abbey and a non-executive director of the Religious Life Safeguarding Service.

Marcus is a past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sexual Aggression and past Chair of NOTA (the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers). Between 1999 and April 2018 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Childhood, Youth and Family Research, University of Huddersfield.

He has authored some eighty publications on child abuse and sex offender related issues including five edited books and in 2019 co-edited a special edition on ’Prevention of Sexual Violence’ for the Journal of Interpersonal Violence (Sage).

He was co-principal investigator for a comprehensive literature review of child sexual abuse in organisations for the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2016) and was the expert witness on grooming for a Royal Commission case study into sexual abuse of young female students by the principal of a prestigious Australian dance school. He was also an expert witness for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) Residential Schools Investigation in both Phases One (2019) and Two (2020).

Steve Reeves is the Executive Director of Global Safeguarding, a specialist safeguarding consultancy, and an internationally recognised specialist in combatting sexual exploitation and abuse in organisational settings.

He sits on various advisory boards, including the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s Independent Safeguarding Reference Group, and is a Strategic Advisor to the British Transport Police. He is a member of the Independent Safeguarding Board for the Church of England, providing independent scrutiny and oversight.

Steve was previously Safeguarding Director at Save the Children, responsible for the organisation’s safeguarding arrangements in UK programmes globally. He was instrumental in establishing INTERPOL’s operation to tackle exploitation and abuse in the aid and development sector; Project Soteria. He remains an Advisor to INTERPOL and Project Soteria.

Prior to working with Save the Children, he was the Head of Safeguarding for The Scout Association, the UK’s largest co-educational youth organisation. He established their first specialised central safeguarding team, allowing a significant increase in safeguards for young people and a reduction in organisational risk.

Steve has a first degree in International Politics and a master’s degree in criminal justice, coupled with extensive professional training in the field of safeguarding and the prevention of child sexual abuse. He received an MBE in 2010.