 My name is Amy Joes, I'm a third year undergrad student at SOAS and I study for BA in Development Studies. My dissertation is called Getting Away with It, an investigation into the mechanisms which perpetuate the sexual exploitation and abuse of local populations by humanitarian workers. I was inspired to write this and research this for my dissertation because it had become a very prominent news story that humanitarian workers were sexually abusing or taking advantage of local populations. This is particularly highlighted in the recent Haiti case of sexual exploitation by Oxfam workers. The reason I was particularly interested in humanitarian workers was because we all know that sexual exploitation and abuse takes place in conflict situations and in post-conflict situations in military settings. That's not something new, that's been happening for a very long time. It's been documented as happening under peacekeeping forces since the 90s, beginning with the Cambodian mission where there started to become a lot of sexually transmitted diseases and a vast growth in prostitutions in Cambodia when peacekeeping troops came there. There has actually been done quite a significant amount of research on the various cases of peacekeepers, but what hasn't been researched and which is really under researched is how humanitarian workers, both international and national, perpetuate these forms of abuses towards local populations. It was that under researched area that I was more interested in because it goes along the lines of thinking that humanitarian agencies are completely benevolent and completely neutral, which we all know isn't quite correct and the idea that the workers that work for them are somehow also benevolent and neutral and just really good people that kind of don't do anything wrong, we all know isn't true and although there are many, many wonderful people that do work in humanitarianism, unfortunately there are some people that are attracted to the industry towards vulnerable people. So the next 12 months for me looks like spending a bit of time at home after graduating and then hopefully going into field work for at least the next year and then maybe in the next few years looking at masters.