Research & Publications

The Underfunded Mandate: Structural Drivers of PSEAH Failure Across Humanitarian, Development, and U.S. Domestic Nonprofit Sectors (2026)

Working paper — under peer review

A comparative study of why prevention of sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (PSEAH) fails at the point of implementation across the international humanitarian, U.S.-funded development, and U.S. domestic nonprofit sectors — and a measurable reform framework for the domestic sector, where the gap is widest and least measured.

• → Read the working paper (open access)

Under peer review; publication details will appear here.

Cite as Gul, S. (2026). The Underfunded Mandate: Structural Drivers of PSEAH Failure Across Humanitarian, Development, and U.S. Domestic Nonprofit Sectors. Zenodo. https://ssrn.com/abstract=6609160

Safeguarding Without a Baseline: A Crosswalk from the IASC Six Core Principles on PSEA to United States Domestic Legal and Regulatory Anchors (2026)

Module 1 of the U.S. Nonprofit Safeguarding Crosswalk Project

This working paper maps the thirteen discrete obligations contained in the IASC Six Core Principles Relating to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse against their closest United States legal and regulatory anchors. It finds that no obligation is matched by a U.S. requirement of general application that both reaches the nonprofit sector as a class and protects the people nonprofits serve: existing coverage is confined to a single certified sub-sector, conditioned on specific federal funding, binds individuals rather than organizations, or operates only as after-the-fact liability. A seven-value gap taxonomy accompanies the crosswalk as an open dataset for reuse by other researchers.

Licensed CC BY 4.0

Cite as Gul, S. (2026). Safeguarding Without a Baseline: A Crosswalk from the IASC Six Core Principles on PSEA to United States Domestic Legal and Regulatory Anchors. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22022939

The full crosswalk: 13 obligations against anchor column A and gap columns G1–G7

Element	A	G1	G2	G3	G4	G5	G6	G7(provisional)
1.1	●			●		●		—
1.2	●	●		●			●	●†
2.1	●	●			●	●	●	—
2.2	●	●				●	●	—
3.1	●		●			●	●	●
3.2			●			●	●	not coded
4.1	●			●		●	●	●
5.1	●	●		●	●			●†
5.2						●	●	not coded
5.3	●	●	●	●		●		●†
6.1	●		●	●	●	●		●
6.2	●			●		●	●	—
6.3	●			●		●		—

• A Anchored

  A genuine U.S. equivalent exists for a defined population.

• G1 Conditional coverage

  Binds only organizations that take a particular funding stream or program.

• G2 Population gap

  Protects a class other than the people the organization serves.

• G3 Sub-sector gap

  Confined to a licensed, certified, or chartered sector.

• G4 Posture gap

  Triggers only after harm is suspected, rather than requiring prevention in advance.

• G5 Operationalization gap

  No instrument specifies the system that delivers the duty.

• G6 Actor gap

  Binds an individual, not the organization.

• G7 Personnel-status gap (provisional)

  Attaches to employment or licensure status, so volunteers in the same role fall outside.

Washington Safeguarding Baseline 2026 (First edition, September 2026)

Empirical study · Companion to Module 1

The first random-sample study of what Washington nonprofits publicly disclose about safeguarding — 100 direct-service organizations coded on six evidence-backed indicators, with their Form 990 governance answers as the comparator. Companion to Safeguarding Without a Baseline (Module 1).

Suggested citation Gul, S. (2026). Washington Safeguarding Baseline 2026: Public safeguarding disclosures of Washington nonprofits (First edition). The U.S. Nonprofit Safeguarding Crosswalk Project. https://pseacrosswalk.org/baseline-2026.html