When feeding the hungry is political

Food aid for Africa
When feeding the hungry is political
A United Nations agency under attack
Mar 18th 2010 (NAIROBI)
From The Economist print edition

THE World Food Programme (WFP), created by the United Nations in 1962 to save lives, has since grown into the behemoth of the aid business, envied and disliked in almost equal measure by many of its smaller peers. It says it feeds 90m people a year in 73 countries. Yet some query whether it always fulfils the high ideals of its humanitarian mandate.

The WFP has had to get used to fierce criticism, particularly of its operations in Africa. The main complaint is that food aid creates a dependency culture among the poor. The WFP employs large numbers of press officers in its headquarters in Rome and elsewhere to jump to its defence. Even so, a recent scandal over its work in Somalia has pricked it. An internal UN report accuses the WFP of abjectly failing to get food to starving Somalis. The report says that systematic collusion between local WFP staffers, Islamist militants and food transporters has led to the diversion of up to half of the food it ships to Somalia, with some of it going to jihadists. The WFP has hotly denied the allegations of corruption, but it has ceased working with three transport contractors who are alleged to have been involved in arms trading.

The truth is hard to tell. Visiting Somalia is dangerous. The WFP’s operation there is run from Nairobi, capital of neighbouring Kenya. It has to contend with pirates at sea and armed groups on land. A spat with the militant Shabab group, now allied to al-Qaeda, means WFP is no longer supplying food to 1m of the 3m Somalis who need it.

The danger for the WFP is that the row over its work in Somalia will impede its massive operations in Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Congo and beyond by prompting calls for extra scrutiny there too. Sudan alone accounted for $635m of WFP’s $2.2 billion spent in sub-Saharan Africa in 2008. Diplomats there have long suspected that food aid has been siphoned off by officials in south Sudan and by armed groups in Sudan’s western region, Darfur.

The whole business of food aid to Africa has come under additional scrutiny recently after a BBC report alleged that up to 95% of the cash provided to buy food for rebel-controlled areas during Ethiopia’s horrendous famine in 1984-85 was in fact used to buy weapons. The WFP says it had little involvement in that episode: it was feeding government-held areas. International charities have denied the story. Bob Geldof, a musician and anti-poverty campaigner, worries that the claim will be exploited by those who want to cut aid.

But the rebels in question, who hail from Tigray, a northern province, have run Ethiopia since 1991. And the country’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, a rebel leader in 1984, faces charges that he is using food aid now to buy support before elections due on May 23rd. Human-rights investigators, including those of the American government, say they have documented the withholding of food and other benefits from opposition supporters. The Ethiopian government denies it, and says that the BBC allegations come from a political opponent of Mr Zenawi.

The WFP says it will welcome any investigation into its activities in Somalia. “The integrity of our organisation is paramount,” insists Josette Sheeran, a former State Department official now heading the outfit. About $2 billion of its $5 billion global budget is provided by America, most of it in sacks of surplus American food. But the WFP—and Somalia’s Shabab rebels—would prefer the American government to give cash, as the Europeans do, which can then be used to buy local food, rewarding farmers who produce surpluses. George Bush’s administration agreed but could not persuade Congress to concur.

Quite apart from the allegations over its role in Somalia, the WFP is failing to meet its target for donations this year. So school meals and other programmes will be cut. America is unlikely to be as generous with cash as it is in kind. Europe’s contribution of $1 billion may be slashed too. This year’s WFP budget of $2.6 billion for sub-Saharan Africa is $1.1 billion short. And the outlook for Africa’s own production is grim. Its food output will fall by a fifth over the next four decades, reckons the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. Climate change, it says, will make food even scarcer in semi-arid countries such as Sudan. The question of how to feed the starving will not go away.