The problems of delivering aid

The problems of delivering aid

Global development news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk

Explainer: How operations to get aid into Somalia have been hit by a lack of cash in the build-up to the famine

The famine in Somalia will spread unless the world community responds with greater urgency, the UN said this week. With more than 12 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti in need of aid, the UN says $1.4bn (£853m) is needed. Operations have been hit by a lack of cash in the build-up to the famine.

How has the lack of funding affected relief operations?

The biggest humanitarian agency operating in Somalia is the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger. Due to the lack of resources, WFP had to reduce rations – including special fortified, nutritional products; cereal; vegetable oil and sugar – throughout Somalia by roughly 65% in April/May and 79% in June. Otherwise it would have run out of supplies by August. WFP managed to reach 49% of the planned beneficiaries – the most vulnerable populations in central regions and Mogadishu. In June, WFP reached 167,000 people affected, including malnourished children and pregnant and nursing mothers in the capital, with stocks of roughly 1,600 metric tons. In May it reached 289,500 people, with stocks of roughly 2,666 metric tonnes. The WFP received no shipments of food to Mogadishu between April and the beginning of July, during the critical period before famine was declared in parts of Somalia, because of a shortage of money.

Didn't the UN appeal for money last year?

The UN launched a consolidated appeal for Somalia last December, requesting nearly $530m to prevent the lack of resources that agencies experienced in the first half of this year. But there was a 50% shortfall with the consequent knock-on effects. It also takes time – to process donations, procure food and transport, and deliver it to the co-operating partners on the ground who will distribute it, can take between three to six months. WFP's stocks in Somalia in November were more than 10,000 metric tonnes of mixed commodities. By June, the figure had dropped to just over 2,500 metric tonnes. The WFP says it has received more than $250m from donors, but needs as much again to support its operations over the next six months. In all, the UN has increased its appeals for Somalia and Kenya by $600m, bringing the funding shortfall to $1.4bn. What is particularly galling for aid officials is that they saw the crisis coming, but found it hard to focus public attention as it was a cumulative event, unlike the Haiti earthquake or the Japan earthquake and tsunami.

What help is now reaching Somalia?

The WFP has started an airlift to Mogadishu. More than 28 metric tonnes of a fortified peanut paste called supplementary plumpy has been flown into the Somali capital so far out of a total 100 metric tonnes intended for some 35,000 malnourished children. WFP is supplying cooked meals to about 85,000 people a day in the capital, where there has been renewed fighting between African Union troops backing the weak Somali government and al-Shabaab, the Islamist insurgents whose more extremist elements have aligned themselves with al-Qaida. Some 27,100 people, mainly from Bay, Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions – arrived in Mogadishu in July. The influx is expected to continue as the famine worsens over the next few months.

Is aid getting to the famine areas?

The two famine areas, southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle, in the south, are controlled by al-Shabaab, a disparate group of insurgents, some of whom want to allow western aid agencies to deliver food, while more hardline elements do not want to grant access, although organisations such as Islamic Relief say they have access to to the south. The International Committee of the Red Crescent, working with the Somali Red Crescent Society, is expanding a therapeutic feeding programme for children suffering from severe malnutrition in isolated rural areas in southern Somalia. WFP says it is trying to get food into al-Shabaab-controlled areas by working with any local partners or NGOs, many of them Islamic. The UN estimates that 3.7 million people are in crisis in Somalia with 3.2 million needing immediate help (2.8 million in the south). Help will be needed at least until December.

What is the relationship between the WFP and al-Shabaab?

Relations have been difficult. In January 2010, the WFP suspended operations in the south citing "unprecedented and inhumane attacks" and threats and demands by al-Shabaab. Besides insecurity problems, the group had demanded that the UN agency remove all women from their jobs and pay $20,000 every six months for "security" in some of the regions it controlled. When the WFP refused, it was given a deadline of 1 January to cease operations. The WFP has lost 14 staff over the past two years in Somalia and UN vehicles have been used by al-Shabaab in suicide bombings. Until its final break with al-Shabaab, the militia had allowed the WFP to work in areas it controlled, and the rebels' structure and organisation even helped delivery in some areas. But al-Shabaab began claiming that food aid was undercutting local farm production and accusing the WFP of having a political agenda.

Have US counter-terrorism laws hampered international aid efforts?

UN officials last year complained that US restrictions designed to stop terrorists in Somalia from diverting aid were hurting humanitarian operations. The US reduced its funding to Somalia in 2009 after its office of foreign assets control (Ofac), part of the Treasury department, voiced concern about aid falling into the hands of al-Shabaab, designated by the US as a terrorist organisation. The cut contributed to a shortfall in funding that meant only two-thirds of the $900m needed for humanitarian aid for Somalia in 2009 was raised, UN officials said last year. Analysts say the WFP has been caught between cuts in US funding and pressure from al-Shabaab. "WFP has been put into an impossible position with both sides playing politics with humanitarian assistance and preventing it from doing what it should be doing," said Sally Healy, assistant fellow of the Africa programme at Chatham House, the international affairs thinktank. In response to concerns from humanitarian groups, the state department on Tuesday said it was issuing new guidance. "We hope this guidance will clarify that aid workers who are partnering with the US government ... are not in conflict with US laws and regulations that seek to limit the resources or to eliminate resources flowing to al-Shabaab," said a senior US administration official. "In essence, what we're doing here is working to reassure humanitarian assistance organisations and workers that good-faith efforts to deliver food to people in need will not risk prosecution." The official made it clear, however, that the US wants procedures to ensure that funds are not diverted to al-Shabaab.

Has there been evidence of diversion of western aid in Somalia?

A UN monitoring group report on the WFP's operations in Somalia issued last year contained damaging allegations. The report said WFP transportation contracts to Somali businessmen constituted the greatest single source of revenue in Somalia and just three contractors received 80% of this business in 2009, worth $200m. "There is no question that irregularities prevailing in the contracting environment and deficiencies in the certification of delivery facilitate opportunities for large-scale diversion," the report said. WFP, however, disputed the figures, saying its payments to all transport contractors came to just $62m not $200m, and that it had already taken steps to widen its pool of contractors and encourage competition. Nevertheless, WFP said it would no longer work with the three contractors named in the report.

• Famine
• Aid
• Africa
• Somalia

Mark Tran

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Just Give ’Em the Money: The Power and Pleasure of Unrestricted Funding

Just Give 'Em the Money: The Power and Pleasure of Unrestricted Funding

SSIR Opinion & Analysis

When I stumbled into philanthropy, seven years out of medical school, I had no idea that there was an accepted set of practices to follow. Through a combination of cluelessness, hubris, and too much time in remote field sites I remained blissfully unaware of the mores and norms of the grant-making world. In my ignorance, I figured that the best thing for the Mulago Foundation to do was to find high-impact organizations focused on the thing we cared about most—and give them a bunch of money.

That's worked out pretty well for us, and unrestricted funding remains a cornerstone of our funding strategy.

What I can't figure out is why everyone doesn't do it. Unrestricted money makes an organization work smoothly, enables innovation, and provides fuel for growth. It unlocks potential and allows people to get down to business and do what they're best at. It makes it possible for great organizations to weather crises without losing momentum. For us, it serves to leverage other people's restricted money—and I love the feeling that we're getting a better deal.

I suppose that many worry that if they give an organization unrestricted money it will be wasted or used inefficiently. The solution is pretty simple: If you don't think an organization is smart enough to use your money well, don't give them any. It would probably be best for all concerned if a few more NGOs went out of business anyway. (I just heard an economist on NPR say that in a healthy economy, about 10 percent of companies go out of business each year). The social sector could use a little pruning. It would probably be nice if a few foundations went out of business too, but that's a subject for another time…

In the real world, if you were to invest in a company you thought would make you a tidy profit, you wouldn't tell the senior management they had to make a product of your choosing, restrict the number of vehicles they purchased, or expand operations into a new country. Why should we do any differently in the social sector? Why not simply invest—fund—on the basis of return in the form of impact? Isn't that the point?

Unrestricted funding on the basis of real impact is a lot more satisfying than worrying about line items in a budget. What is important is the impact per donor dollar: the cost per child's life saved, per family out of poverty, per island species saved from extinction. If we like that number—if we think they are cost effective in terms of impact—we don't have to get worked up about overhead costs or whether employees fly business class now and again.

Perhaps donors feel that they're being more responsible by restricting funding to a given activity when they can track that activity closely. They're not. An organization can faithfully carry out the activities funded with restricted money and still not have much impact. The attempt to achieve tight control and close observation can miss the impact forest for the operational trees.

Or perhaps some donors give restricted money to have closer engagement with the doers. Let's face it, they're the coolest people out there, and I certainly treasure my relationships with those who are doing great work to make the world a better place. But if you really want a genuine relationship, show some faith and put some skin in the game with unrestricted money. You'll find that people are much less guarded and much more open to your ideas and ongoing input. The current fashion of donors calling themselves "partners" is more than a little silly—we're funders and it's a fundamentally asymmetric power dynamic. When you change the equation to unrestricted money for real impact, however, the dynamic can start to shift: donors give doers the dough they need to create impact; doers give donors the impact they need to justify their existence. It starts to look less like feudalism and more like symbiosis.

So, if you want to get more out of your philanthropy—both personally and professionally—find high-impact organizations working on the stuff you care about most and give them some money. Make them accountable for impact, and if you like the result, give them a bunch more money. They'll respect you for it, and will probably listen to you from more than politeness. And if enough of us do that often enough, we might even move the social sector toward a more efficient market for real impact.

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Kevin Starr directs the Mulago Foundation and the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program. He finally stopped practicing medicine last year.

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Somalia and the limits of humanitarian aid

Somalia and the limits of humanitarian aid

Africa Works

Jeffrey Gettleman's excellent article on the Somali famine presents a useful reminder of Amartya Sen's famous insight that famines, chiefly, are human constructions. The persistence of famines isn't a tragedy but rather a consequence of social and political breakdowns. In the Somali case, the country's long civil war– and the tactics used by contending factions — means that famine is a tool of combat rather than the result of "food shortages" as such.

Because famines usually arise from dysfunctional distribution of food resources (rather than from an absolute shortage of food), aid agencies are inevitably limited in what they can do to alleviate famines. Moreoever, realities on the ground mean that famine aid inevitably benefits combatants as much or more than the truly needy. In Somalia, political dysfunction mocks the good intentions of relief agents. That famines are man-made does not obviate the need for famine relief efforts. However, the social construction of famines ought to give rise to a parallel public understanding of why famines persist and the limits of humanitarian aid.

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Famine and drought

Famine and drought

Owen abroad

There is a famine in the Horn of Africa.  I know there is a lot else in the news at the moment – the awful events in Norway,  the US debt crisis, the British hacking scandal – but we need to keep this at the front of our minds.  The situation is very bad. If you can afford it, you can give money in British pounds here or in US dollars here.

It is at times like this that we get a lot of half-baked commentary about famine. We are told that the problem is drought, or over-population, or global warming. Special interest groups call for more money to be spent on agriculture. Commentators complain that we've given aid for decades and nothing gets any better.

So here are two things to keep in mind.

First, famine is not caused by drought or overpopulation or insufficient food production. As Amartya Sen explained in Poverty and Famines, people go hungry when they cannot access food, because they are too poor or because markets and governments fail.  Drought is neither necessary nor sufficient for famine.

Ed Carr says that this insight holds in the current crisis:

The long and short of it is that food insecurity is rarely about absolute supplies of food – mostly it is about access and entitlements to existing food supplies.  The HoA [Horn of Africa] situation does actually invoke outright scarcity, but that scarcity can be traced not just to weather – it is also about access to local and regional markets (weak at best) and politics/the state (Somalia lacks a sovereign state, and the patchy, ad hoc governance provided by al Shabaab does little to ensure either access or entitlement to food and livelihoods for the population).  For those who doubt this, look at the FEWS NET maps I put in previous posts (here and here).  Famine stops at the Somali border.  I assure you this is not a political manipulation of the data – it is the data we have.  Basically, the people without a functional state and collapsing markets are being hit much harder than their counterparts in Ethiopia and Kenya, even though everyone is affected by the same bad rains, and the livelihoods of those in Somalia are not all that different than those across the borders in Ethiopia and Kenya.

Map of the Horn of Africa by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS-NET)

If you are interested in learning more, read Ed Carr's book Delivering Development, and his blog. My colleague Charles Kenny makes a similar point in Foreign Policy.

Second, development aid works. Though there is considerable suffering, famine has been avoided in Ethiopia this time so far, and that is because of the safety net programme and disaster management system which has been set up by the Ethiopian government, with help from foreign aid. Remember 1984, and people leaving their land to make their way to feeding centres in Ethiopia?  Not happening this time. Why not?  Here's what the BBC says:

BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says many people at the heart of the current disaster – in Ethiopia – have emerged relatively unscathed.  This is because the government in Addis Ababa has such an extensive safety net in place, he says.  Pre-positioned supplies mean the Ethiopian authorities could respond rapidly once the extent of the drought became clear.  The first food distributions began in February and have continued to the worst effected communities across a vast area. Communities are suffering, but the famine that has hit neighbouring Somalia has so far been avoided in Ethiopia and overall the disaster management system, built up since the 1980s, has worked.

Martin Plaut is no starry-eyed apologist for the aid system or the Ethiopian government.  But like me, he was in Ethiopia in 1984 so he knows what famine looks like; and he can see the difference in Ethiopia this time. As he points out, the investments that have been made over the past two decades have transformed Ethiopia's ability to deal with bad rains. Ethiopia has suffered drought and famine about every ten years.  But now a determined government, backed by foreign aid, has put in place systems which have made Ethiopia more resilient and prevented a repetition this time of past tragedies.  If you are one of the Ethiopians who has put this in place, one of the hard-pressed development workers who has patiently assisted, or if you have contributed to aid, through taxes or donations, you should pat yourself on the back: bad as things are in the Horn of Africa today, the crisis would have been a lot worse without you.

Please spare a thought, and a few quid (or a few dollars) if you can afford it, for the 11 million people affected by hunger in East Africa today; and for the many aid agency staff working round the clock, often in difficult and dangerous conditions, to try to help them.

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