From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Mar 26 2010 - 16:49:54 EST
UN official slams report on Somalia food diversion
AP
GENEVA
March 26, 2010
GENEVA (AP) - A report alleging widespread corruption in Somali food
deliveries lacks evidence and is endangering lifesaving assistance to the
impoverished African country, the U.N.'s aid chief in Somalia says.
In a letter obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, Mark Bowden
criticized the "sensational" claim by a panel of experts that up to half the
food aid for Somalia's hungry people was being diverted to cartels and other
unintended targets.
"These estimates of diversion are not apparently based on any documentation,
but rather on hearsay and commonly held perception," Bowden wrote in the
letter, dated March 23, to a group created by the U.N. Security Council to
monitor sanctions against Somalia. He didn't provide his own estimate.
The allegations concern one of the most challenging places in the world for
aid work, and would be difficult to verify.
Findings of the report were first made public by The New York Times on March
9, and have led to severe criticism of U.N. accountability efforts. It said
food aid in Somalia was being diverted to corrupt contractors, radical
Islamic militants and local U.N. workers, and called on U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to authorize an independent investigation of
the operations of the World Food Program in the country.
Bowden also challenged the report's assertion that U.N. agencies were
accepting stolen and diverted aid as a "cost of doing business" in the
violence-ravaged Horn of Africa nation. He said that U.N. bodies have spent
over $350,000 to improve monitoring in Somalia since 2008, and adopted other
steps to limit risks in a "complex environment where a war economy has
predominated for many years."
Transporters in Somalia must truck bags of food through roadblocks manned by
a bewildering array of militias, insurgents and bandits. Kidnappings and
executions are common and the insecurity makes it difficult for senior U.N.
officials to travel to the country to check on procedures. Investigators
could end up relying on the same people they are probing to provide
protection.
Bowden rejected one of the report's recommendations to allow monitors to use
U.N. Humanitarian Air Services to travel around the country.
"Passengers are in general restricted to those working for humanitarian
organizations," he wrote. "The work of the monitoring group has been
determined to be political in nature and therefore ... it would not be
appropriate to make UNHAS flights available to them."
He said the bad publicity was making it harder for humanitarian workers
dealing with increased malnutrition in Somalia, where over 3 million people
- or about half the population - need aid.
"This is already affecting flows of humanitarian assistance," he said.
In Geneva on Thursday, WFP executive director Josette Sheeran also said
there was "zero evidence" for the report's claims of large-scale diversion
of aid. She said the agency would welcome an investigation, but noted that
no proof has been presented or uncovered to back up the report.
WFP has previously said that internal investigations showed between 2 and 10
percent of aid was being sold.
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