Rather than reaching the needy, up to half of Somalia’s food aid ends up in the pockets of radical militants, corrupt bureaucrats and local businessmen, and local UN staff, according to an article in yesterday’s New York Times on the findings of a new UN report.
The report, which has not yet been made public but was shown to The New York Times by diplomats, outlines a host of problems so grave that it recommends that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon open an independent investigation into the World Food Program’s Somalia operations. It suggests that the program rebuild the food distribution system — which serves at least 2.5 million people and whose aid was worth about $485 million in 2009 — from scratch to break what it describes as a corrupt cartel of Somali distributors.
In addition to the diversion of food aid, regional Somali authorities are collaborating with pirates who hijack ships along the lawless coast, the report says, and Somali government ministers have auctioned off diplomatic visas for trips to Europe to the highest bidders, some of whom may have been pirates or insurgents.
The report will be presented to the Security Council on Tuesday. Early analysis from the UN Dispatch uses the findings to discuss the tension between development and diplomacy objectives (What Happens When Political and Humanitarian Goals Collide?).
UPDATE: The WFP has now declared that it will no longer channel food aid through the three Somali businessmen who have until now been receiving 80 percent ($200 million dollars worth) of WFP transportation contracts, and who are suspected of ties to Islamist insurgents.
For background on US policy in Somalia and recent tensions between the US and the UN there: See the War and Peace blog which argued last month that there is no way to aid Somalia without some part of the assistance flowing to Islamist groups, and asks why the US buys out radical groups in Iraq and Afghanistan but wants to cut them out in Somalia. A new CFR report argues that the US should step back politically while continuing to channel humanitarian relief and development aid through local authorities, despite the risk of that aid being diverted.
5 Comments
The food does arrive. Only the recipients have to pay the market price for it.
Guess the local farmers are delighted that they no longer have to compete with free WFP food.
Rare though that also the WFP staff are said to be involved. Usually they escape the attention.
This is off topic, however, I do remember you had some well-placed, satirical, comments on how the new security measures issued by the TSA would not help increase american security.
This story would probably add some volumes to your argument: That these airport security measures may actually significantly hurt US security. I quote form Evan Hill at The Majlis :
Do you still feel satire has been a major contributor to solving these problems? What should we do next?
I’m not sure that this will help. I never worked in Somalia, but colleagues who have worked there on food programs have frequently chalked this up to a cost of doing business. I’m sure that if there had been a way to avoid food being diverted to war lords and others that they would have tried it already. I know that WFP staff have been implicated, but that is certainly not new, either.
A better argument might be to find a more effective replacement for food aid, period. It usually does much more harm than good.
This is sad. But equally sad is the fact that this blog failed to see or the editors closed their eyes or ears to what BBC has been reporting about aid money raised by Live Aid 25 years ago to feed starving ethiopians was diverted to buy armors by the then rebels and current leaders of Ethiopia. I can’t believe Bill failed to see this, or is it a deliberate omission….
Belay
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