HANDBOOK FOR DEVELOPING A SAFEGUARDING POLICY

In 2020, we surveyed 114 wildlife conservationists, environmentalists and government officers in Vietnam to understand the sexual harassment situation in conservation sector.Despite most participants felt that their work environment was generally free from sexual harassment, 5 out of 6 respondents had directly experienced sexual harassment in some forms. The most frequently reported types of sexual harassment were verbal, but physical forms, including attempted or actual sexual assaults, were also reported. Sexual harassment occurred regardless of gender or position within an organisation, although women are more likely to experience it than their male counterparts.

The overtly male-dominated environment of biodiversity conservation fieldwork can also
present safety issues both for women and men who do not conform to normative forms of
masculinity, which in turn may expose them to harassment and violence. These challenges
can prove to be career limiting: female scientists are more likely to resign early than women in other professions (Glass et al., 2013), especially when they are having to work in unfair, unsafe environments due to issuessuch as sexual harassment (Clancy et al., 2014).

Ultimately, these issues of inequality undermine our ability within the conservation sector to achieve our key goals of biodiversity protection and ecological stewardship (Matulis &Moyer, 2016; Tallis &
Lubchenco, 2014).

These guidelines aim to support you and your organization to put mechanisms in places to prevent and respond to GBV in their working environment .