No matter who you are or where you serve, everyone has a role to play in preventing and responding to sexual exploitation and abuse. We spoke with Wendy Cue, OCHA’s Senior Coordinator for Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) and Sexual Harassment, about the fight to protect communities in crisis.
What does a typical day in your role look like?
No two days are ever the same, but one constant is front of mind: protecting people from harm. My role blends strategic leadership, operational backstopping, and system-wide support to make sure that actions that protect people from sexual exploitation, abuse, and sexual harassment (PSEAH) are integrated into humanitarian action.
I work with humanitarian country teams, supporting in-country PSEA coordinators, advising Humanitarian Coordinators, and collaborating with UN partners (including OSCSEA and OVRA), NGOs, and donors. Together, we manage risk, uphold victim-centered principles, and strengthen our collective response.
What major challenges do you encounter, and how do you overcome them?
The biggest challenge is sustaining strong, consistent protection efforts in the context of sharply reduced resources and rising needs. With 239 million people projected to need humanitarian assistance in 2026, and insufficient funding to support them, crisis-affected communities are more vulnerable than ever.
Funding cuts undermine oversight and increase risk. This can erode accountability to affected people, which, as the Emergency Relief Coordinator (@UNReliefChief) has said, is central to the Humanitarian Reset. We overcome this by working collectively across agencies, sectors, and donors to reduce duplication and focus our limited resources where they deliver the greatest impact.
In an environment where systems are being restructured, mandates are shifting, and expectations evolving, leadership has to provide safety: psychological safety for teams navigating uncertainty, and operational safety for communities counting on us. Here’s how I try to stay the course:
1. Model the behavior you want to see. We do face burnout. I’ve had moments when I felt like walking away, especailly when despite our best efforts, incidents happen. Naming that disappointment openly and staying grounded in our values helps teams regain perspective, regroup and recommit.
2. Keep the focus on effectiveness and efficiency, the core of the Humanitarian Reset. Protection is a precondition for safe, credible delivery. The private sector is clear that culture drives performance; the humanitarian sector must recognize the economic and operational cost of protection failures.
3. Double down on collective action. In a resource crunch, fragmentation is expensive. Shared services, pooled mechanisms, and joint standards deliver more protection per dollar.
4. Finally, recruit and retain for values. Skills matter, but integrity, empathy, and accountability matter even more. The ideas aren’t new. What’s hard is staying the course on implementation: measuring, learning, and iterating without losing momentum.
What achievements are you most proud of?
The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Vision and Strategy, which translated collective ambition into real, measurable progress; the Investigators’ Manual (A Victim Centred Approach to Investigation of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Complaints), with key performance indicators to strengthen accountability; and the SEA Risk Overview, to name a few.
I’m especially proud of the PSEA Capacity Project (PSEACap), which rapidly deploys inter-agency PSEA coordinators in high-risk contexts. PSEACap strengthens national networks, promotes common standards, reduces duplication, and keeps PSEAH operationally relevant. In a world of growing needs and shrinking resources, it has delivered stronger coordination, increased national ownership, and more consistent protection for communities across multiple crises.
What motivates you to work on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse?
My conviction that humanitarian action must never cause harm and must always be accountable to the people it serves. Our work is fundamentally about power, trust, and dignity. Listening to affected communities, acting on what we hear, and changing how the system operates for the better.
If you had one “ask” to strengthen our ability to address SEA, what would it be?
Sustained, predictable investment in system-wide protection capacity, paired with clear leadership accountability at every level. Short term projects won’t deliver culture change. Predictable support for inter-agency coordination—including PSEACap—and for national PSEA networks allows us to plan, prevent, and respond consistently.
When leaders back PSEAH as a core responsibility with stable resources, we can shift from reactive compliance to genuine accountability to affected people, and humanitarian action becomes safer, more credible, and more effective.
What message would you like to share with colleagues, partners, and leaders?
Protection from sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment is not a problem to solve once and for all. It is a continuous practice and must be part of how we work every day and in every context. In times of unprecedented need and constrained resources, it cannot be deprioritized.
The cost of harm is broader than we admit: the trauma to victims and survivors, the morale of staff, the trust of communities and authorities, and ultimately access and delivery. Protection is inseparable from access, delivery, and trust.
You can’t do more with less and you can’t do the same with less.
Prevention requires sustained leadership, humility, and collaboration across the entire system. Effective, efficient humanitarian action depends on protection from sexual misconduct.
USEFUL RESOURCES
How to report sexual exploitation and abuse:
Learn more about the UN response: