The foreign-aid industry has had a bad news cycle. First, British newspapers were consumed with a spat between the British Broadcasting Corp. and Live Aid founder Bob Geldof over a BBC report that tens of millions of dollars of aid to Ethiopia during the 1984–1985 famine were used for arms. Now a more current and equally egregious scandal involving the world’s largest humanitarian agency has spun out of Ethiopia’s neighbor Somalia. A U.N. report released last week paints a damning portrait of the World Food Programme’s operations there: an estimated 50 percent of food delivered by the U.N. agency is essentially being stolen—not only by the WFP’s own personnel and contractors, but also Somalia’s armed militias, some of whom are radical Islamists.
Somalia is not the first crisis for the agency. These new allegations join a series of recent missteps there that have brought its contracting and operations under scrutiny for its role in aid missions around the world, from North Korea to the Horn of Africa. And the report sent the U.N. backpedaling in its war of words with Washington over the Obama administration’s decision to cut aid to Somali operations last year. What is going on at the WFP?
The ugliest revelations are in the report’s details. Three Somali businessmen won about 80 percent of the agency’s $200 million in transport contracts last year, in what is described as a 12-year-old “de facto cartel.” One of them, Abdulqadir Nur “Enow,” apparently staged a hijacking of his own trucks in order to sell the food. In another case, the report cites witnesses saying Enow’s company sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of food aid in local markets, an outcome made possible by the fact that WFP depended on a local agency run by Enow’s wife to verify his deliveries. Meanwhile, a second WFP trucking contractor, Abukar Omar Adaani, used his wealth to finance a rebel militia that launched an offensive in Mogadishu last year against Somalia’s U.N.-backed transitional government and African Union peacekeepers. Adaani also persuaded the WFP to fund a road officials said was designed to give Islamist insurgents access to an airstrip, according to the report.
In response, the WFP has suspended contracts with the three businessmen and accused U.N. investigators of overstating the amounts of its trucking payments. (In January it suspended operations in some areas controlled by Islamist rebels.) The agency didn’t respond to a question from NEWSWEEK about its knowledge of Somali trucking magnate Adaani’s links to Somali insurgents, and it said that the Adaani-built road it had funded was meant for the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Except these aren’t isolated problems. Next door, in Ethiopia (one of the largest recipients of food aid in the world), the WFP has spent millions on contracts with transport companies controlled by the country’s increasingly authoritarian ruling party, NEWSWEEK has learned. In the country’s eastern, Somali-speaking region, where nearly 2 million people receive food aid overseen by the WFP (along with other aid agencies) and where insurgents have long claimed the Ethiopian government uses food as a weapon, a mere 12 percent of food reached the people for which it was intended in 2008, according to figures from the U.S. State Department.
Meanwhile, for its $1.2 billion, three-year food-relief program in Afghanistan, the WFP’s trucking and shipping costs for food were two to three times above commercial rates, according to an analysis by Fox News’s George Russell published last month, which noted that less than 40 percent of the mission’s budget was actually for food. Likewise an investigation by Russell last year also found WFP’s planned shipping costs to send more than a half billion dollars of food aid to North Korea were inflated—prompting the agency to admit that some of its shipping budget went to companies owned by dictator Kim Jong Il’s government.
As for the WFP, it says it doesn’t know how the United States arrived at its calculations about aid deliveries in Ethiopia. In Afghanistan, it said the need to construct warehouses and replace trucks helped account for its high transit costs, and it notes that donor governments and agencies have funded less than a fifth of its North Korea operations. North Korea’s remote location and lack of competition in shipping routes to the country also account for the high costs, Ramiro Lopes da Silva, a WFP spokesman said in an e-mail.
Admittedly, places like Afghanistan and Somalia are some of the most difficult countries in the world for aid agencies to work. Some leakage of aid is inevitable. But the U.N.’s agencies are notorious for their high administrative costs and the opacity of their spending. A 2008 Brookings paper coauthored by William Easterly, a well-known aid researcher, ranked 39 large aid donors on criteria including transparency, overhead costs, and selectivity of aid spending. The WFP, which received $4 billion in donations last year—including $1.8 billion from the United States—tied for last place (though the study noted that data from some agencies was unavailable).
The problem in part may be that U.N. aid agencies see themselves as accountable to the world’s governments, which provide 92 percent of the WFP’s funding, rather than to the public. Asked for data on its contracts with ruling-party trucking companies in Ethiopia—including one owned by a conglomerate whose No. 2 official is the Ethiopian prime minister’s wife—the WFP said disclosing such information to the public would jeopardize “its ability to negotiate the best possible rates and delivery conditions.” A spokesman did not respond to a request for how much it pays Kim Jong Il’s government to ship food to North Korea.
Indeed, what’s so unusual about the report on Somalia aid isn’t just its conclusions, it’s the mere fact that an independent body conducted a thorough probe into U.N. contracting and published its findings. As the Brookings paper notes, “it is a sad reflection on the aid establishment that knowing where the money goes is still so difficult and that the picture available from partial knowledge remains so disturbing.”
ADDIS ABABA (IRIN) – Human traffickers and smugglers in Ethiopia have taken advantage of the upcoming World Cup, duping victims into believing that South Africa has created huge employment opportunities, says a government report, Illegal Migration: Causes, Consequences and Solutions to human trafficking and smuggling in Ethiopia.
Some 20,000 to 25,000 Ethiopians are trafficked to various countries annually, the January report notes. Together with smuggling from Somalia, the business is worth up to US$40 million a year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Traffickers operate in organized groups of eight to 25 in big towns.
“Human traffickers use various tricks, including the deception that South Africa has created employment opportunities,” Zenebu Tadesse, State Minister for Labour and Social Affairs, said.
Speaking at a national conference on human trafficking and smuggling, she said the government would implement measures to tackle the problem, including repatriating thousands of Ethiopians who had been trafficked out of their country and protecting the rights of those living in various countries.
So far, she added, 2,000 Ethiopians had been repatriated from Tanzania, Yemen, Libya and other Gulf countries, with the support of the IOM, the UN Refugee Agency and other stakeholders.
Some traffickers and smugglers have also been arraigned in court. “Ethiopian police have recently found some eight human traffickers and smugglers and sentenced them to five to 12 years,” said Moni Mengesha, head of the human trafficking and illegal drugs department at the Ethiopian federal police.
Going south
Alemu (not his real name), a 27-year-old businessman, left for South Africa in 2009 but ended up in a migrants’ camp in Malawi.
“I went to one of the secret evening presentations given by brokers in Hosaina town [400km south of the capital, Addis Ababa],” he said. “I decided that night to sell everything, close my small shop and travel to South Africa.”
They travelled in a group of eight. “The broker told us the journey from Ethiopia to South Africa would be very easy,” he added. “[But] one died from hunger as we travelled four days without food, another was shot dead [allegedly] by police around the border between Kenya and Tanzania.”
The group was caught around Songwe River by Malawi police in August 2009 and taken to Dazleka refugee camp in Dowa, some 25km north of Malawi’s capital Lilongwe.
The camp is one of the biggest for refugees from Ethiopia, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. There were about 400 Ethiopians when IRIN visited in September 2009.
“It took me almost a year to reach Malawi,” Alemu told IRIN at Songwe. “The broker in Addis told us we would easily reach South Africa, [but] we were jailed in Tanzania for three months. Each of us had paid them US$1,200. We were duped.
“I cannot reach South Africa now. I have nothing… nothing! I want to go back home. We are treated as terrorists as we steal maize and sugar cane from Malawian farmers.”
“Creating havoc”
“We are worried about Ethiopians and Somali refugees here,” a local resident told IRIN. “They are engaged in theft and robbery. We want the government to stop them from stealing our property and creating havoc here.”
Internal Affairs and Public Security Minister Aaron Sangala told Malawi’s daily newspaper, The Nation, on 6 August 2009: “I have been told they [Ethiopians] go to people’s homes in gangs of 50 terrorizing Malawians. These, to us, are economic refugees who are using Malawi as a transit centre. We cannot tolerate that abuse of our hospitality.”
“Bringing them back cannot be the only solution,” Temesgen Zewde, an opposition parliamentarian in Ethiopia, said.
Another opposition leader, Wondimu Idsa, told parliament: “It is also for political reasons that many people, including MPs, journalists and doctors, are leaving Ethiopia.” The government denied the claims.
Teshome Tadese, special adviser to the president of Southern region, from which many immigrants hail, said: “There is no political problem at all in our region. Our region is very stable; it’s totally in search of better jobs and employment that these citizens are leaving the country.”
That view was echoed by the IOM head of mission in Ethiopia, Josiah Ogina. He urged Ethiopia to ratify and apply UN protocols to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children.
“We conducted research on youth who live in the Amhara region and are potential migrants to the Middle East and South Africa,” he told IRIN. “They told us that their main problem is unemployment not politics.”
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) — Ethiopian opposition politicians were barred from visiting their jailed leader, Birtukan Mideksa, Saturday after a U.S. State Department human rights report said her mental health has deteriorated.
Eight opposition politicians asked for access to Birtukan at the prison. They were met by prison head Abebe Zemichael and, after a heated argument in the street outside, were refused permission for not being family members.
Unity for Democracy and Justice party (UDJ) leader Birtukan, a 36-year-old single mother, is seen by analysts as the biggest threat to the almost 20-year-rule of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Ethiopia holds parliamentary elections on May 23.
“We are here today because we are worried about her health and we want to see for ourselves what her condition is,” senior UDJ official Seye Abraha told Reuters at the entrance to Kaliti prison, 20 km from the capital Addis Ababa.
“Only her mother and her daughter have been given access to her. They bar friends, they bar party colleagues, no lawyer, no independent doctors.”
Ethiopia’s last elections in 2005 ended with violence after the opposition said the government fixed its victory.
About 200 protesters were killed by soldiers in riots and opposition leaders, including Birtukan, were jailed for life after Meles said they were trying to oust him.
They were pardoned and released in 2007 when they signed a letter admitting to provoking the violence. Birtukan was sent back to prison in December 2008 after she denied responsibility for the trouble and said she did not ask for a pardon.
The U.S. State Department’s human rights report for 2009 said this month: “There were credible reports that Birtukan’s mental health deteriorated significantly during the year.”
It called her a political prisoner, echoing rights groups.
“She is severely depressed,” a relative who did not want to be named told Reuters. “We need to get an independent doctor, not a prison one, to see her.”
Ethiopian law permits friends and lawyers to visit prisoners.
Meles has said Birtukan was in “perfect” health, but that diplomats and journalists would not be allowed to visit her.
Analysts say Meles’ Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition will win the May 23 poll.
The opposition says this is because they are harassed and jailed. The government says the opposition is trying to discredit a poll it has no chance of winning.
A report by Newsweek reveals that trucking companies controlled by Meles Zenawi’s wife Azeb Mesfin and other ruling party officials are being paid millions of dollars to transport food to famine victims in Ethiopia. Read Newsweek’s full report here.
(The Economist) — THE United States, the richest and most powerful nation on earth, is also the most generous donor to one of the poorest, Ethiopia. America says it gives $1 billion in aid every year to Africa’s second-most-populous country, which also happens to host the African Union’s headquarters.
Yet Barack Obama’s administration has barely stirred itself to protest against recent attempts by Ethiopia to jam programmes in Amharic, the country’s main language, beamed by the Voice of America, a respected state-funded broadcaster. Ethiopia’s prime minister warlord, Meles Zenawi, brazenly says he will continue to jam the signal for as long as it incites what he calls hatred. He has compared the Amharic service to the hate speech spewing from Radio Mille Collines, which helped provoke Rwanda’s genocide in 1994. The State Department called the comment inflammatory but seems loth to make Mr Zenawi suffer for it.
One reason is that the Pentagon needs Ethiopia and its bare-knuckle intelligence service to help keep al-Qaeda fighters in neighbouring Somalia at bay. Many of Washington’s aid people argue that, though Mr Zenawi is no saint, he still offers the best chance of keeping Ethiopia together; even now, as one of the world’s least developed countries, it cannot feed itself.
Human-rights campaigners think the limpness of America and European Union countries, especially Britain, in the face of Mr Zenawi gives him a free rein to abuse his own people. This week’s report by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby, claims that, after 20 years in power, Mr Zenawi’s ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front Tigrean People’s Liberation Front has “total control of local and district administrations to monitor and intimidate individuals at a household level.” With a general election due on May 23rd, opposition supporters, says the report, are often castigated as subversives by the government, denied the right to assembly, and harassed. The press has been “stifled”. Newspapers avoid writing about opposition parties or people the government says have terrorist links.
Furthermore, says Ben Rawlence, who wrote the report, “Meles is using aid to build a single-party state.” Foreign governments, he says, have colluded in eroding civil liberties and democracy by letting their aid be manipulated by Mr Zenawi. Because of his party’s stranglehold at village level, its members can decide on entitlements such as places for children in school and the distribution of food handouts. Peasants who back the opposition get less. Farmers complain they are denied fertiliser for the same reason.
The Ethiopian government Woyanne has denounced the report as outrageous and ridiculous. Mr Zenawi says that groups such as Human Rights Watch interpret human rights too narrowly. The only way to guarantee Ethiopia a free future, he argues, is to keep it stable while it continues to develop. His political calculations are straightforward. He reckons, for instance, that reporting by the Voice of America does more harm inside the country than outside criticism of his censorship.
In any case, Mr Zenawi has signed up for a code of electoral conduct and invited foreign election observers in. He still has time to win over critics before the election, for instance by freeing an imprisoned opposition leader, Birtukan Mideksa, as a goodwill gesture.
Aid-giving governments, for their part, are unlikely to change their minds. Even after hundreds of protesters were shot dead by the police after the last elections in 2004, aid to Ethiopia was only repackaged in different forms, not suspended. Besides, foreign politicians have promised their own voters that they will dish out large amounts of aid and argue that at least Ethiopia is less corrupt than many other African countries. Mr Zenawi understands this well—and exploits it.
Author Tesfaye GebreAb’s new book, Yederawiw Mastawesha, is due to be released on April 10 in Ethiopian stores around the world. The 400-page book is Tesfaye’s best work yet.
The following is an interview Netsanet Publishers recently conducted with Tesfaye GebreAb:
