Managing Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Harassment Risks: a Toolkit for Financial Institutions

About the Toolkit

Sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment (SEAH) is a risk that the EBRD’s financial institution (FI) clients have to identify and address in the subprojects that they finance.

SEAH can cause devastating and long-lasting damage to individuals, harming their physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health, as well as their financial well-being. Although it occurs frequently, it is rarely reported, with fewer than 40 per cent of women seeking help and less than 10 per cent reporting cases to the police. Victims often remain silent out of fear of losing their jobs, feelings of shame or concern that they won’t be believed.

FIs must therefore treat SEAH as a serious and pervasive risk across their entire portfolio, even in the absence of reported cases.

This toolkit assists the EBRD’s FI clients in effectively identifying and addressing SEAH risks. It takes a practical approach, focusing on how to incorporate SEAH considerations into existing environmental and social management systems.

This project is supported by the EBRD Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Multi-Donor Account (Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Spain, TaiwanBusiness-EBRD Technical Cooperation Fund and the United Kingdom).