No sooner did we cite four good reasons for putting the U.N. in our rearview mirror the other day than we come across yet another example of U.N. corruption. Does it make you feel good to know that your tax dollars are being spent to send food to starving children in Somalia? If so, you might not want to read this:
One of the UN's largest international relief efforts is under investigation after it emerged that thousands of sacks of food aid were being diverted from starving refugees and openly sold for profit.
The head of the UN's $955 million aid operation in Somalia has launched an inquiry after being shown footage showing tonnes of food bearing the World Food Programme (WFP) logo widely on sale in Mogadishu, the capital.
Stacks of bags of maize and wheat and tins of cooking oil - marked "not for re-sale" and bearing the UN stamp - are on sale from ten warehouses and 15 shops in the city's main market.
About 45,000 tons of WFP food are shipped to Somalia from Kenya every month. Mogadishu traders told Channel 4 News that they bought their supplies straight from UN staff. "We buy [food] aid from WFP staff directly or from people they employ," one market trader said.
"They take us to the warehouses used by the WFP and let us load our lorries. The goods are freely available and you can buy as much as you like, but we usually buy no more than 500 to 1,000 sacks at a time. Just a tonne or half a tonne a day can be shifted more discreetly."
The food could hardly be more needed. More than a million people have been driven from their homes by fighting in the area, including 117,000 thought to have fled from Mogadishu in the past month.
Children starve while warlords and others line their pockets with the connivance of U.N. employees. The U.N. does not keep the peace anywhere in the world (Watch, for example, movies like No Man's Land, or Beyond the Gates, or Hotel Rwanda) and its humanitarian functions are in serious need of oversight.
Wouldn't it be safer, cheaper, and more efficient to just cut out the middle man, take the money we give to the U.N., and use it to deliver the food ourselves?
RLC