Concern as NGOs divert aid meant for starving Somalis

By KENFREY KIBERENGE

Fresh details have emerged of how some deceitful Kenyans and Somali nationals are diverting humanitarian aid meant for millions of Somalis suffering in the war-torn country using bogus non-governmental organisations.

While Somalia has been the worst hit in the recent droughts in the Horn of Africa, the lion share of aid has ended up in Kenya and Ethiopia, which have "better coping mechanisms and strategies than what the Somalis have at the moment".

Kenyan military distribute free medicine to Somalis in Somali in February. [PHOTO: FILE/STANDARD]

In 2010 a United Nations-sanctioned monitoring group report on the WFP’s operations in Somalia warned that the majority of humanitarian assistance to Somalia consists of food aid, which is particularly vulnerable to diversion.

In August last year, Mr Brendan Gormley, Chief Executive of Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee told Channel 4 News it had raised £57 million (about Sh7.4 billion) for the Horn of Africa Appeal, but that only 27 per cent of the money was allocated to Somalia with over 70 per cent going to Kenya and Ethiopia.

Crude tactics

But what is more disturbing are renewed claims that some NGOs operating from Nairobi are employing crude tactics to cheat donors that they have delivered humanitarian aid to the war-torn country only to end up selling it for profit.

Some individuals operating NGOs in Nairobi are said to register a logistics company, which certifies that food had been delivered to Somalia while in actual sense this has not been done or only a fraction reaches the intended beneficiaries.

Donors require that an independent company tracks aid delivery to ascertain that it had indeed reached the intended beneficiaries.

"It is a huge scam that is happening where unscrupulous individuals are enriching themselves in Nairobi as majority poor in Somalia are dying of hunger," said a source.

The head of Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) Dr Unni Karkunakara recently said: "There’s a huge hole in the middle where aid is not getting to."