Rome - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have launched a first-of-its-kind Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) Risk Mapping Package. It was developed for the Food Security Cluster, which is co-led by FAO and WFP, and coordinates food security responses during and after a humanitarian crisis in 34 operations around the world.
Developed under WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain's two-year Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Championship on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment (PSEAH), which concludes at the end of 2025, this tool will enable humanitarians to better serve and protect vulnerable communities. Together with the PSEA at the Frontline 2 package, the new tool stands as one of the flagship achievements of Executive Director McCain's tenure as IASC PSEAH Champion, addressing a critical gap in existing SEA guidance.
While many resources exist, most are complex and resource-intensive - often requiring dedicated Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) expertise - or they are too generic to practically meet the needs of humanitarian clusters, field-based coordination mechanisms on the frontline of crises around the world. The new SEA Risk Mapping Package provides simple, visual and context-adaptable materials for use in meetings, trainings and planning sessions - without requiring additional resources or lengthy assessments. This practical approach helps move PSEA from being just policy into being directly part of day-to-day programming, ensuring that safeguarding the most vulnerable becomes an operational reality across diverse humanitarian contexts. Under WFP's IASC Championship, packages have also been developed for the Logistics, Emergency Telecommunications, Health and Shelter Clusters.
This initiative reflects the shared commitment of WFP Executive Director McCain and FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu to make PSEA a core standard of humanitarian action.
"As humanitarian workers, each of us has a responsibility to prevent sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment on our watch. It is critically important that every vulnerable person who receives assistance can do so safely and with dignity," said Cindy McCain, WFP Executive Director. "This practical risk assessment tool gives humanitarian partners the ability to identify and effectively manage these risks during frontline operations."
"FAO is committed to ensuring that those we serve receive assistance safely and with dignity," said QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General. "This tool is a concrete and practical example of what collective action can achieve when we put people's protection, dignity and rights first."
This innovative resource enables Food Security Cluster Coordinators to identify and address SEA risks directly within sectoral activities, strengthening safeguards across the humanitarian system. The tool has been developed in collaboration with Empowered Aid , a participatory research initiative focused on preventing sexual exploitation and abuse in aid delivery, based at the Global Women's Institute at the George Washington University.
"As humanitarian programmes face increasing resource constraints and services are scaled back, the risk of SEA rises. This tool embeds risk identification into routine sectoral work, ensuring safe access to assistance and making protection everyone's responsibility," said Ross Smith, WFP Director of Emergencies. "As co-lead of the Food Security Cluster, WFP is committed to helping clusters and partners integrate PSEA into everyday decisions."
"PSEA must be embedded in every stage of emergency response and resilience building," said Rein Paulsen, FAO Director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience. "This tool does this by giving clusters a practical and shared way to identify and address SEA risks early, ensuring that assistance does not cause harm to the communities we serve. In the current environment this is more important than ever".
The SEA Risk Mapping and Mitigation Package - featuring adaptable checklists tailored for different clusters and practical workshop materials - is now available on ReliefWeb: Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) Risk Mapping & Mitigation Package for Clusters - World | ReliefWeb
