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US Embassy Lima Works on Repatriating Thousands of Americans #StuckInPeru

March 26, 2020 By in Ambassadors, Americans Abroad, chargé d’affaires, Consular Work, Coronavirus, Evacuations, Hostages, MEDical, Realities of the FS, Regional Bureaus, State Department, Trends, U.S. Missions, WHA|Western Hemisphere Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Updated: March 28, 9:45 am PDT

A Health Alert from US Embassy Lima in Peru notes that post is continuing its operations and is “coordinating with the Peruvian Government to arrange repatriation flights over the next few days for U.S. citizens to return to the United States.”
Post’s Alert issued on Tuesday said that “As of March 24, approximately 700 Americans have departed Peru on repatriation flights. It also announced the departure from post of Ambassador Urs, and the travel to Peru of Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Julie Chung  “to support our aggressive repatriation efforts.”

“For medical reasons, Ambassador Krishna Urs departed Peru on March 20.  He continues to engage from Washington with senior Peruvian officials as well as to support the Department’s efforts on behalf of the United States.”

As of 5:00PM on March 25, post said it has  repatriated over 1000 Americans from Peru.
In video below released by Embassy Lima, the Chargé d’Affaires Denison K. Offutt says that there are currently over 5,000 Americans in Peru. We don’t know if all of them are asking to return to the United States, but if so, this would be one of the largest evacuations of U.S. citizens from overseas at this time. This is not as huge as the nearly 15,000 evacuation from Lebanon in 2006 but the  logistics of moving a large number of people to the United States with border closures and limited air traffic during a pandemic will be extraordinarily challenging.
According to Embassy Lima, the Peruvian government declared a national state of emergency on March 15, 2020, at 8:00 PM Peru local time.  Under the state of emergency, Peru enacted 15 days of mandatory quarantine, starting at 00:00 on March 16, 2020.  At 23:59 PM on March 16, 2020, the Peruvian Government closed all international borders (land, air, and maritime) and suspended all interprovincial travel within Peru (land, air, and river).
Update from post indicates unusual difficulties with host country in obtaining permission for these repatriation flights . First, the Government of Peru told Ambassador Urs on March 23 that it had authorized repatriation flights, only for the contracted airline to notify the embassy at night that the flights are not approved. The following day, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed to US Embassy Lima that no U.S. flights had been approved. Ambassador Urs then spoke to the Peruvian Foreign Minister at 6:45 a.m., during which time, he was reportedly assured that the permissions would be granted in time. The Peruvian government ultimately declined to provide the proper clearances for a LATAM flight to pick up Americans stranded in Cusco.  A charter flight operated by American Airlines departed Miami with a scheduled arrival at 12:30 p.m.  Embassy Lima said that the Peruvian government also declined to approve permits for the charter flight, so the pilot returned the airplane to Miami.
Something’s going on there, hey?
During the March 25 Special Briefing, CA PDAS Ian Brownlee called the logjam “a capacity issue on the part of the Peruvian Government” and that the “information didn’t efficiently trickle down to the people in the regulatory agencies that had to issue the permits, the landing permits for the planes.”
Embassy Lima’s update on March 25 said  that there were two flights scheduled today, but these are “booked with humanitarian priority individuals, including older adults, people with underlying health conditions, minors traveling without a parent or legal guardian, and other adults in need of medical assistance.” Also that “the U.S. Embassy is scheduling additional flights for this week pending Peruvian government authorization.” As of March 25, Embassy Lima was able to get its first flight from Cusco to Miami (via Lima) and is reportedly scheduling a flight from Iquitos to Miami. So that’s good news.
Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne confirmed that Canada received the go-ahead for 3 Air Canada flights to bring stranded Canadians home from Peru this week.
On March 21, Politico reported that a U.S. official familiar with the situation said the Peruvian government is not allowing Americans stuck in Peru to leave until the White House ensures thousands of Peruvians are given safe passage home.[…] “The government of Peru is basically holding these Americans hostage,” the U.S. official said. “They want the U.S. to fill planes with Peruvians before they’ll let the planes land to pick up Americans. But they’re not ready or organized in the United States to gather their people up, and they don’t want to pay for the flight.“
Could Peru wait this out or slow this down as Americans stuck in Peru fumes louder, and clogs congressional offices with complaints? Already Senator Rubio (R-Texas FL) has publicly scolded the State Department for Americans stuck in Peru “due to lack or (sic) urgency by some in mid-level of .”
Except that Peru apparently wants something from the White House not the State Department.
March 25 DOS Special Briefing with CA PDAS Ian Brownlee called the logjam in Peru a “capacity issue:”

The logjam there was a capacity issue on the part of the Peruvian Government. To reduce this to simplicity, we had commitment from the senior-most levels of the government – from the foreign minister, et cetera, the ministerial level – that yes, the flight yesterday Monday would be able to go forward – flights yesterday Monday would be able to go forward. That information didn’t efficiently trickle down to the people in the regulatory agencies that had to issue the permits, the landing permits for the planes, and so the American Airlines flight that was going into Lima literally turned around as it was preparing to enter Peruvian airspace because it didn’t have the permit necessary.

The difficulty arises there from the fact that there was some infections in the civil aviation authority and in the civilian side of the airport, and they just shut down that entire entity and they’re trying to run it on a bit of a shoestring from the military side of the airport. We’re helping them address this shortfall by – we’ve taken the INL, the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement hangar on the military side of the airport, taken everything out of it. We’re arranging chairs in there at socially distant appropriate spacing and we’re preparing to use that as a working space, a processing space to move people through. We’re also preparing to send down a flyaway team of consular officers and we have a senior officer from the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs going down to assist as well. So we’re doing what we can to help the Peruvians fill that sort of capacity gap, and we hope – we hope – that this will keep things moving more fluidly in the future. Out.

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US Embassy Lima: Avianca Airlines May Have Outbound Flights For #StuckinPeru Americans

@StateDept Releases New Sexual Assault Guidance For COM Personnel & Facilities Outside the United States

June 26, 2017 By in Foreign Service, Functional Bureaus, John F. Kerry, Leadership and Management, Realities of the FS, Regulations, Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, State Department, Top Ranks, U.S. Missions Tags: , , ,

Posted: 1:09 am ET
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We’ve written several blogposts (see below) about the lack of sexual assault guidance in the Foreign Affairs Manual, most recently in May this year (see A #SexualAssault Reporting Process Foreign Service Members Deserve: How Much Longer Secretary #Tillerson?).

On June 6, the State Department finally issued a new Foreign Affairs Manual sub-chapter 1710 SEXUAL ASSAULTS INVOLVING CHIEF OF MISSION PERSONNEL AND FACILITIES but it was not made available online. On June 20, a FAM revision was made according to the Change Transmittal to correct the subchapter title, specifying that the subchapter pertains to matters outside the United States, as well as to update a few other references. The chapter is now available online for folks to read.

https://fam.state.gov/FAM/03FAM/03FAM1710.html

You may also read it below; use the lower-right hand arrow to maximize the Cloudup page.

We’re still reading though this. We hope to have a follow-up post later. For now we want to say thank you to the FS members who shared their difficult stories with us and our readers; to former U/S Patrick Kennedy for the creation of the inter-bureau taskforce to create this subchapter; to the members of the task force who did the work on this, and Secretary Kerry then, and Secretary Tillerson now who oversees the Department and the Foreign Service.

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A #SexualAssault Reporting Process Foreign Service Members Deserve: How Much Longer Secretary #Tillerson?

May 22, 2017 By in Diplomatic Security, Foreign Service, Realities of the FS, Regulations, Rex Tillerson, State Department, U.S. Missions Tags: , , , ,

Posted: 8:55 pm PT
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We’ve written several blogposts on sexual assaults and/or the lack of clear sexual assault reporting guidance in the Foreign Service in 2016 (see The State Dept’s Sexual Assault Reporting Procedure Appears to Be a Black Hole of Grief and First Person: I am a ✂️ FSO who was ✂️ raped in ✂️… Continuing on has been ✂️ incredibly difficult… and other links below).

On November 22 last year, the State Department directed a task force to create a new section in the Foreign Affairs Manual for sexual assault (see U/S For Management Directs Task Force to Create New Sexual Assault FAM Guidance). In December, we posted an update when the State Department told us that “The Department is committed to the work the taskforce is doing to create a sexual assault section for the FAM, work that will continue past inauguration day.” (see @StateDept Task Force For New Sexual Assault FAM Guidance – An Update). Through the last few months we have regularly checked in with the State Department to follow-up on the new regulations.

Today is exactly six months to the day when an inter-bureau taskforce was directed to create a new section in the Foreign Affairs Manual for guidance on sexual assault.  The State Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs — that in the past had been responsive in assuring us that the agency is committed to the creation of the sexual assault regulations —  did not acknowledge nor respond to our inquiry as of this writing.

So let’s ask their boss — how much longer Secretary Tillerson before the Foreign Service gets its sexual assault reporting guidance?

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Peace Corps OIG: 53% of Rapes Perpetrated on Volunteers Not Reported, See Why

December 9, 2016 By in Diplomatic Security, Foreign Assistance, John F. Kerry, Leadership and Management, MEDical, Oversight, Realities of the FS, Regulations, Security, State Department, Trends Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Posted: 2:18 am ET
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The Inspector General for the Peace Corps released its final evaluation report of the Peace Corps’ Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Response Program.  The report notes that there were 513 sexual assaults entered into the Peace Corps’ Consolidated Incident Reporting System between September 3, 2013 and September 29, 2015.

In 2014, Volunteers reported 251 sexual assaults and there were 241 sexual assaults in 2015. The assaults in 2015 included 52 rapes, 35 aggravated sexual assaults, and 154 non-aggravated sexual assaults.

The main findings are:

  • The Peace Corps largely complied with the requirements in the Kate Puzey Act.
  • Compared to our SARRR evaluation in 2013, the Peace Corps markedly improved how it supported Volunteers who had reported a sexual assault. However we found individual cases where the Peace Corps did not meet its standard to respond effectively and compassionately to victims of sexual assault, including a few instances of victim blaming and improperly sharing confidential details with staff.
  • Some applicants were either not aware of the crime and risks previous Volunteers had faced in their country of service or they did not understand the information that was provided to them.
  • The SARRR program did not fully utilize some staff with SARRR expertise. The SARRR program would also benefit from a risk reduction strategy that tailors training to the country of service, addresses the risks of sexual harassment, and identifies factors that make sites unsafe.
  • Finally, the SARRR training’s design and delivery may have detracted from Volunteer comprehension and learning.

The Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011 (the Kate Puzey Act) required the Peace Corps to undertake a number of reforms, including providing sexual assault risk reduction and response (SARRR) training for Volunteers, developing a comprehensive SARRR policy, and training overseas staff on that policy. The Act directed the Peace Corps OIG to evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of the training and policy, and to review a statistically significant number of sexual assault cases.

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Stats on Rapes and Sexual Assaults

Peace Corps Volunteers and trainees reported 251 sexual assaults in 2014 and 241 sexual assaults in 2015. The assaults in 2015 included 52 rapes, 35 aggravated sexual assaults, and 154 non-aggravated sexual assaults.  Female Volunteers reported the majority of these sexual assaults (228 cases). Male Volunteers reported 13 sexual assaults including 1 rape, 6 aggravated sexual assaults, and 6 non-aggravated sexual assaults.

Starting in 2014, the Peace Corps began surveying Volunteers at the close of their service regarding crimes they had experienced and not reported to the agency. Survey results indicated that the proportion of Peace Corps victims who did not report one or more rapes or aggravated sexual assaults was similar to the proportion of Peace Corps victims who did not report other crimes: roughly 50 percent of crimes against Volunteers were not reported. This Peace Corps analysis indicated that 53 percent of rapes and 49 percent of aggravated sexual assaults were not reported. It also showed that 85 percent of surveyed respondents who experienced at least one non-aggravated sexual assault had not reported one or more of them to the Peace Corps.

Available Help and Agency Reporting

The evaluation found that the agency had provided contact information for: the Peace Corps Inspector General, a 24-hour sexual assault hotline for Volunteers, the Peace Corps Office of Victim Advocacy, and the Sexual Assault Response Liaison in the Volunteer’s country of service as required by the Act.
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The Kate Puzey Act required the Peace Corps to create a system “for restricted and unrestricted reporting of sexual assault.” Volunteers may file either a “restricted” or a “standard” report, depending on which response services they would like the agency to provide. According to MS 243 Procedures, the restricted reporting option “allows Volunteers to request certain specific services without dissemination of personally identifying information about the Volunteer or the details of the sexual assault beyond those who are directly providing the services, and without automatically triggering an official investigative process.” The agency treats all reports as restricted until the Volunteer decides to choose a standard report, and a Volunteer may elect to convert his or her restricted report to standard at any time.

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Some Volunteers had not learned important information in the sexual assault risk reduction and response sessions, including the difference between restricted and standard reporting, the services available to a victim of a sexual assault, how to report a sexual assault incident, and the identity and role of Sexual Assault Response Liaisons at post. The training was insufficiently tailored to the country of service (as required by the Act), was not responsive to the needs of diverse Volunteers, and did not address the problem of sexual harassment. In addition, some staff delivered the training inconsistently due to poor training skills. Furthermore, the Peace Corps’ approach to assessing the Volunteer training was incomplete and did not provide a useful measure of training effectiveness.
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[T]he agency often accommodated Volunteers’ requests to change sites for safety and security reasons, in some cases Volunteers were separated from the Peace Corps rather than relocated to another site. Volunteers we interviewed felt disenfranchised from the discussions regarding their safety and continued service.[…]We found that staff and Volunteers had a mistaken belief that they were limited to six or fewer counseling sessions after a sexual assault. As a result, some Peace Corps Medical Officers provided incorrect information about the availability of counseling. We concluded that some Volunteer sexual assault survivors could have been deterred from reporting their need for counseling.

Non-Reporting Analysis

The analysis summarized the primary reasons Volunteers had not reported their sexual assaults, which included: embarrassment, self-blame, not perceiving the sexual assault as a crime or serious event, and believing that there was nothing the Peace Corps could do about the assault. For non-aggravated sexual assaults—which were both the most frequently reported type of assault, as well as the most under reported—surveyed Volunteers had not reported them for three main reasons: they did not think the incidents were serious or threatening; they perceived the incident as commonplace in the environment where they served; and they did not believe there was anything the Peace Corps could do to address it.

Other reasons that surveyed Volunteers said they had not reported their sexual assaults included concerns about how Peace Corps staff might respond, such as blaming the victim for their assault, failing to respect the victim’s privacy and confidentiality, or simply not responding to the victim in a timely and supportive manner. Volunteers also indicated in their survey responses that they had not reported a sexual assault because they anticipated adverse consequences, such as being required to change their site, sent home, or punished for having violated a Peace Corps policy. These concerns were significantly more pronounced for rape victims and aggravated sexual assault victims than for non-aggravated sexual assault victims.

Among surveyed Volunteers who had not reported their assaults to the Peace Corps because they were concerned about how staff would respond to them or the potential adverse consequences of reporting, a relatively high percentage had served at a small number of posts. Two of the 54 posts in the survey constituted almost 25 percent of the Volunteers who did not report their assaults because of these concerns. Nine posts represented nearly 50 percent of the Volunteers who had not reported an assault for similar reasons.

 

The PC/OIG review includes interviews with 127 staff, 72 Volunteers, visits to 6 countries, and review of 138 sexual assault cases.  The report also includes 36 recommendations for the Peace Corps.

The report is a crucial reference as the State Department task force works on FAM guidance for sexual assault in the Foreign Service. NSVRC also notes that supporting survivors means assisting them with financial burdens as well as physical & emotional ones. Read here: 

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