Somalia is off-limits to most western reporters and five Somali journalists have been killed there so far this year. Aid workers are frequently kidnapped – a million dollars is the going rate to have them released – and four WFP workers have been killed since last August.
So, to put it mildly, this was a difficult investigation to mount, relying heavily on the skills and bravery of the Somali member of our team.
He travelled down the so-called “Afgoye corridor”, which houses the biggest concentration of displaced people anywhere in the world.
The corridor is the 19 mile road from Mogadishu to the town of Afgoye and it is lined with the homes of around 400,000 Somalis, living in makeshift huts in temperatures around a hundred degrees.
Islamist militia, gangsters and warring clans have made the corridor so dangerous that the WFP’s Somalia Director admits that he hasn’t been able to visit Afgoye himself in 18 months.
And shortly after we got our film footage safely out of Afgoye, a Somali journalist was kidnapped by masked gunmen there and held for five days. But the real story in Afgoye is the plight of its people.
There is no more startling evidence of that than in the feeding centre run by a small and remarkable team of Somali doctors from Medecins Sans Frontieres.
We met Abdullahi Noor who is just 16-months-old. He’s dangerously close to dying from a lack of food and water. A tiny victim of what may be the worst and least reported humanitarian crisis anywhere.
“I cannot move because of hunger” said Fatima Abdirhaman, a mother of four children too exhausted to lift herself off the ground. “I have nothing, nothing to eat. I ate a small amount of porridge yesterday, and that was the last thing I had.”
In the four days Channel 4 spent filming in the camps, the only food seen by our producer was boiled leaves, often harvested by children. At the camps we visited, elders repeatedly blamed the World Food Programme for diverting aid away from desperate people.
“It is absolutely true that the WFP brings in a very large quantity of aid” said Sheikh Mukhtar, leader of the “Ifis 1″ camp which houses 310 families. “What happens is that they bring the food here to prove it has been delivered, but then only offload a small amount and take the rest back with them to the market in Mogadishu to sell.”
Afterwards the Sheikh pointed to the roadside graves of those children who had not survived. 28 children dead, he said, in the last six months. “We are at the mercy of gunmen if we go back home” he continued, “and if we stay here we are dying like flies.”
In the Bisharo camp which houses 700 families, camp leader Moallim Mohamed said his people had been forced to pay for ration cards and for the armed guards accompanying WFP staff.
“This is not a one off, this is regular,” Mr Mohamed said. “We pay the gunmen, we pay the man who gives out the cards. If we don’t pay up, they just cover the truck up, open fire on us and drive away. Even on the last trip, they fired at us and eventually we paid them money. I paid the money myself!”
The WFP say that these kinds of activities are likely to be carried by local militia demanding protection money and are unrelated to WFP personnel.
They say they have more than doubled their staff, and improved independent monitoring.
The WFP operation is run from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, which is 765 miles from Mogadishu by road. I spent a week there, talking about what we’d found out with as many aid workers and diplomats as I could, as well as officials from the UN and WFP themselves.
Nobody would deny that Somalia is one of the most complex and dangerous countries in the world to work in.
But the overwhelming sense I came away with was one of deep concern that a vital operation which feeds 3.5 million Somalis may have crossed the line, in terms of its accountability both to its donors and to the very people it is there to help.
Watch Jonathan Rugman’s report on Channel 4 News at 7pm, Monday night or read more online now.
Commentsoldest first
Since the early 1990s there have been repeated allegations of serious fraud and corruption involving UN operations in Somalia. In 1994 there was the case of $3.9 million of cash stolen from the UN office in Mogadishu in broad daylight in which on one was held accountable. Then there was story of UNHCR staff selling refugee resettlement documents to the higher bidders. More recently UNDP Somalia was alleged to have been involved in widespread fraud and corruption. In all these and many other cases the UN promised to investigate but no one was ever held accountable despite overwhelming evidence. In the meantime donors continue to turn blind eye and bankroll this system.
UNDP Whistleblower Details Comprehensive Wrongdoing in Somalia Projects
http://www.whistleblower.org/content/press_detail.cfm?press_id=1373
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UNDP in Somalia: Allegations of a Cash-for-Al Qaeda Program
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http://foreignaffairs.republicans.house.gov/apps/list/press/foreignaffairs_rep/051408UNDP.shtml
U.N. Says It Will Root out Fraud, Corruption
By Thalif Deen
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=17951
There is no question that aid agencies have to turn a blind eye to a certain amount of corruption. I imagine it is the only way that they can get things done. I suppose they tell themselves that when people are in dire need every little helps and at least some of the food is being disturbed and the rest is being made available even if people have to pay for it. Of course this means that the people in most need are the ones who are going to suffer the most.
The question is what do you do about it. Stop the deliveries and every body starves. Use armed guards to protect it? Chances are they will be corrupted or coerced by the militias. You could try seizing the goods from the markets that are selling it. But who would you use to do it? The police are as corrupt as the militias. Use the military and you will inflame an already dangerous situation.
I congratulate Jonathan Rugman and his team for their brave reporting of the scandalous food aid diversions in Somalia, which ring so true. I remain totally unconvinced that the UN/WFP officials, who rarely (if ever) visit the target areas for the food aid due to security concern, have this situation under control. There should be an immediate independent investigation, and an alternative channel should urgently be identified for getting food aid to who needs it most. I used to work in central Africa, where WFP officials always denied any significant diversions of food aid, in order not to lose credibility among the donor commuity, despite compelling evidence to the contrary – evidence that I witnessed with my own eyes.
In your report, the attitude of the WFP director in Somalia was totally unacceptable, verging on complacency in the face of people who are starving as a direct result of the criminal behaviour of many who are paid from WFP funds and who are complicit in this outrageous scandal. WFP should not have a monopoly over food aid delivery, and others should be empowered to deliver. This piece of reporting by Channel 4 News was superb, and I feel proud that a British media team can produce this. I would like the team to follow up, and follow up, and follow up, until we – the taxpayers – see the food being delivered free-of-charge to the hungry.
Trevor Lucey, Executive Director, Transrural Trust
I have just watched Channel 4’s report about the fraud and corruption surrounding the food aid being sent to Somalia and am appalled that a charity such as the UN’s WFP allows its aid, so generously funded by members of the western public, to fall into the hands of scheming mercenaries, some of whom allegedly are actually employees of the WFP. When people like myself are moved by the heart breaking images of starving, suffering children, the most basic human urge is to want to do something to help. Organisations such as the WFP promise to do just that on our behalf, so we give as much as we can. It’s the worst kind of a lie to discover that the company we trust to do some good with our money is turning its back on the thousands of needy and escalating the crisis by contributing to the immoral corruption and fraud that exist indigenously. I hope that the directorship of the company will get their heads out of the sand and start to rectify the situation. How can anyone in a position like theirs rest at night with the lives of thousands of destitute human beings in the balance? The worst part of this whole sorry affair is the lack of trust the public will give to charities in future. I for one have heard the uneasy rumour that the money given to charities doesn’t always make its way to the people who need it and here is the irrefutable proof! What a blow for humanitarian aid. I wish that there was something else that I, as a human being with a conscience, could do. When I see images like I saw tonight, it’s all I can think of and I wish I knew the answer. Unfortunately, giving money to a charity like the WFP is not something I would consider doing again in a hurry.
I found Jonathan Rugman’s report very upsetting this evening especially when I saw the children eating boiled leaves and other people listless with hunger. It is an absolute disgrace that donated food is being sold on by some while their own people starve to death.
If it wasn’t for the brave Somali journalist who filmed evidence of the food being sold and the team who put the report together, no one would have known about this.
I wish there was something I could do to help these poor people but it seems that it’s not an issue of charity but of ensuring that the aid gets to the people it was meant to save. I hope Peter Goossens has been shamed into doing something about this.
“”Nobody would deny that Somalia is one of the most complex and dangerous countries in the world to work in”
you can not depend on one of your team member and without a concrete prove to pubicize such allegations on the only food channel these peaple have to live.
for the sake of reporting.
i been there myself and most of these peaple sell half of the family portions as soon as they receive to buy other things
They say a picture speaks a thousand words, Jonathan and company congratulations for your creative an-investigative piece.
As a reporter who has worked in Africa’s worst famine of Ethiopia in the 90’s I was of course moved by the pictures, but, I expected a more closer-to-the-truth piece from such an established entity as Channel 4.I doubt your “unprofessional Somali” colleague who shot the video can deliver such a piece and hence the patch work purporting to be an investigative piece.
The message Channel 4 is trying to pass to the World is that food meant for the neediest is sold off or looted in Somalia but you have no evidence to support your vague point.
This is very unethical, if you can’t produce an investigative piece please do not lie to the world and raise alarms that might force those giving the aid to withdraw their assistance, which will automatically have a worser consequence than the corruption you have tried to erroneously paint .
I expected to see trucks full of looted food being ferried to the market from the WFP warehouse. Not partially hidden faces of unscrupulous traders whose authenticity and motive of speaking is questionable due to the conflicting interest surrounding almost everything in such a chaotic country like Somalia.
Gentlemen next time please dig deep and stop causing more harm to the needy Somalis through such uncompleted “humanitarian” pieces.
Aleesa.
I just watched Jonathan’s piece online and I said this was long overdue. infact this has been going all over Somalia. this WFP officials sitting in their ivory tower offices in nairobi were aware but dared not to investigate ir halt. the’ve mastered the art of denial.
shamefull the solicit the funds in the names of these starving somalis and end enjoying a huge chunk in the big salaries and perks what is delivered hardly reach the needy. this typical in other UN agencies.
Jonathan this should be the start of series of investigative piece , am sure lots of people support it even me I will lend a hand
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