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Foreword

Sex­u­al exploita­tion and abuse vio­late every­thing that the Unit­ed Nations stands for. Such heinous acts, when com­mit­ted by Unit­ed Nations per­son­nel, destroy the trust under­pin­ning our work and lim­it our abil­i­ty to ful­fill our man­dates towards the peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties we serve. We must spare no effort to pre­vent and com­bat sex­u­al exploita­tion and abuse while putting the rights and dig­ni­ty of vic­tims at the cen­tre of our work. In 2017, the Unit­ed Nations launched a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy to pre­vent sex­u­al exploita­tion and abuse, plac­ing strong lead­er­ship at the heart of our efforts to elim­i­nate this scourge from our orga­ni­za­tion. As senior UN lead­ers, you play a piv­otal role in trans­lat­ing these com­mit­ments into con­crete actions, pro­mot­ing and uphold­ing the high­est stan­dards of integri­ty in our work. Your lead­er­ship sets the tone, and it is essen­tial that this com­mit­ment cas­cades through all lev­els of man­age­ment, fos­ter­ing a cul­ture of respect and respon­si­bil­i­ty. This toolk­it is designed to pro­vide clear and prac­ti­cal lead­er­ship tools to imple­ment pre­ven­tion strate­gies and pro­grams to pro­tect from sex­u­al exploita­tion and abuse. Let us lead by exam­ple and com­mit to con­front sex­u­al exploita­tion and abuse head-on with the urgency that it demands.

António Guter­res Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations