How Somalia famine aid went astray

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A large amount of food sent by the U.N. to the Somali capital during last year's famine never reached the starving people it was intended for, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Some of the World Food Program supplies went to the black market, some to feed livestock. One warehouse full of rations was looted in its entirety by a Somali government official. And across the city, feeding sites handed out far less food than records indicate they should have.

The British government estimates between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in Somalia's famine, and the U.N. has requested $1.5 billion for Somalia this year, partly to prevent a return of famine.

The World Food Program provides much of Somalia's food aid, and the U.N. says donations of food and cash saved half a million lives in the second half of last year. In the chaos of a civil war, with the aid effort's own personnel at mortal risk merely for being associated with the West, orderly, corruption-free food distribution could never be guaranteed.

But AP's three-month investigation into sites providing hot meals to families in government-controlled Mogadishu reveals various shortcomings, some of which WFP says it is already addressing by changing procedures.

A critical problem was keeping track of supplies: WFP knew how much food was being shipped to the capital, but not how much was being cooked or how many people were showing up to eat it.

Barey Muse, a mother of three, illustrated the frustrations. "My children are hungry but when I go here for food I must return empty-handed," she said last month, holding two large bowls outside a feeding site called Hodan.

The WFP had to design a flexible program so that families could use the nearest hot-meal center as they moved between neighborhoods to avoid fighting. The price of flexibility was less control over theft, officials acknowledge.

The AP, along with a network of seven Somali observers who for their safety cannot identified, conducted more than 60 visits to 13 of the 21 sites where hot meals are prepared. From those visits, interviews with aid recipients and internal reports, it emerges that:

— Somali aid groups would cook and distribute at least 30 percent more food when expecting visits by journalists or WFP officials.

— Some food was trucked directly from an aid agency warehouse to the market to be sold for profit.

— WFP's independent monitors repeatedly sounded the alarm, saying relatives of Somali aid workers would receive large handouts while others went without. One of their reports spoke of supplies being fed to livestock.

— A Somali government official stole 74 metric tons of food, according to an internal WFP report obtained by AP.

Stefano Porretti, head of WFP's Somalia program, said feeding programs in Mogadishu were expanded rapidly in emergency conditions, and from October to January, WFP did not have independent monitoring was suspended.

"Changes to it (WFP procedures) are now being made," he said.

He said AP's research was done in that time frame, and that after AP's findings were shown to WFP, the U.N. body's new third-party monitor watched the sites closely for a week.

"The amount of food delivered is what is expected, and it is being cooked," Porretti said. "There is no diversion at the sites."