Oxfam is – still – struggling to learn its lesson

Oxfam’s boss has learned his lesson – or has he? In the wake of the revelations over the Haiti sex scandal, the charity’s chief executive Mark Goldring adopted the rather unwise decision to come out fighting:

‘The intensity and the ferocity of the attack makes you wonder, what did we do? We murdered babies in their cots? Certainly, the scale and the intensity of the attacks feels out of proportion to the level of culpability. I struggle to understand it.’

Three days on since that disastrous interview in the Guardian, Goldring’s struggle to understand is over. I’m sorry, he told a Commons select committee this morning, not once but repeatedly. It’s welcome news that Goldring has backed down. Yet in his apology he also fell short. Why? Because he repeated his mistake of pointing to Oxfam’s good work rather than simply holding his hands up for the wrongdoing in Haiti. He told MPs:

‘I do apologise. I was thinking under stress, I had given many interviews, I had made many decisions to try and lead Oxfam’s response to this…

‘…I was thinking about amazing work I had seen Oxfam do across the world, most recently for refugees coming from Myanmar. I should not have said those things…’

There is no doubt Goldring is right: Oxfam does do a lot of good work, not least in Myanmar where the charity has helped tens of thousands of people. But the aftermath of this scandal is not the time and the place to talk about it. In recent years, Oxfam has proved itself quite adept at publicising the good it does. After all, that’s why the charity employs 23 press officers. The problem is that it hasn’t done the same when things have gone wrong. So by, once again, pointing to the ‘amazing work’ that Oxfam has done, Goldring shows all the signs that the charity is – still – struggling to learn its lesson.