Somalia: The Lucrative Business in NGOs

The world has seen substantial worsening situations in terms of natural and man-made disasters in the different corners of the globe within the recent decades and thousands of non-profit organizations distributed billions of dollars of aid to every corner of the world over the past fifty years. An immense effort has been done by a large number of organizations and positively impacted communities delivering services in both big cities and very remote villages which are not easily accessible especially, during the conflicts, droughts or rainy seasons. A big thanks and appreciations go to the local and international NGOs that have worked under different circumstances while some of them lost their dedicated staffs during the assistance of starving people. Many NGOs have worked harder and exerted leverages influencing international and local donors to help the most marginalized communities, promoting inclusion and endeavoring to combat economic and social inequalities up to their level. Because of the commitments and tremendous efforts, some NGOs were able to curb emergencies, create jobs, invest marketable skills, invest small-scale projects and businesses that thousands of people benefited through grants and micro-financing schemes. 

The Lucrative Business in the Humanitarian Agencies; Despite all the above efforts made by humanitarian agencies to save the lives of the most vulnerable population affected by misfortunes, and every NGO has its own implementation policy and very restrictive measures including but not limited to; money-laundering policy, anti-corruption, legal and compliance mechanisms, and other aid delivery and administrative requirements which are legally binding to both staff, clients and partners, there is still a lucrative business mostly involved by very responsible aid staffs and aid bypasses needy. 

The deceitful action and corruptions alleged to the humanitarian agencies in Somalia does not only undermine the quality and effectiveness of humanitarian operations, but it also sabotages the credibility, integrity, and trustworthiness of humanitarian agencies and their staffs at large. The humanitarian embezzlement is under-researched subject and it has been said many times in different reports that the risks of mismanagement do not always come at the time of implementation but it starts from the needs assessments where the staffs involve the identification of the areas considered to be eligible for intervention manipulate the target areas favouring to the local elites, either by nepotism or cronyism or due to receiving bribes. Beneficiaries are excluded in the projects planning phases and they are not regarded as the key stakeholders of projects. Therefore, beneficiaries blame humanitarian organizations are the architects of their future and that is why many projects are not sustainable after their completion, because they are either irrelevant or poorly implemented. Organizations that work cash program transfer and opt manual payments instead of bank payments or mobile-money transfer are very prone to corruption where some staffs would be able to forge receipts, invoices, audit reports or make deal with gatekeepers and local corrupted authorities to facilitate payments made to ghost beneficiaries. 

Procurement together with the supply chain is regarded as one of the highest risks in the humanitarian operations. Procurement staff are in advance deal with specified contractors and create phantom companies to lessen the risk of competition in the bidding processes. The favoured jobberies are either give agency staff to predefined percentage when they finally get the offer or they are invited to be company shareholders, or they own companies by themselves. The corruption network is not only peculiar to the procurement and program staffs, but also from biased recruitment or promotions made by the support team to favour members of their communities, political parties, relatives, or for the intent of underhanded and crooked businesses. 

One of my friends is a supplier to a three different International NGOs and I have asked how it was possible to him to secure all these contracts with such long time and he replied: “You can’t expect to be a permeant contractor without not paying bribes and incentives to gluttonous officers”.I asked again how far the sustenance earned from this contract based on swindling can be legitimate and he replied “This is a requisite condition and I have only two options; either to pay the daylight bribery or to give up from the contract” and he added “what else should I do? We have to behave the way they are behaving because we want life”. 

Corruption Evidence; Recently UNDP published a long list of entities and individuals in several countries found fraud and corruptions with the recommendations of UNDP’s Vendor Review Committee. The debarred individuals and entities are ineligible to participate in any UNDP future tender actions and many other humanitarian organizations in Somalia did the same. In addition to that; UN Conference for Trade and Development discloses that poor countries transfer to rich countries billions of dollars of wealth per year and this is another evidence of the corruption level involved by both local and expatriate staffs. All these and beyond happen because thousands of organizations and institutions fundraise with impunity and operate under the radar of zero accountability, while NGOs reiterate repeatedly that they have no tolerance to the proscribed practices and corruption engagements that might be involved by their staff and partners, but this isn’t prevented the malpractices and the illegal aid diversions involved by aid workers. 

Finally, organizations will not be able to combat corruption unless they create a strong internal culture of integrity and everyone should subject to the organization’s code of conduct. For those involved and participated corruption practices, aid diversion, abuse of power, breach of their contractual obligations, or perform acts contrary to the organization’s principles should be punished as prescribed by the organization’s staff manuals.

Elmi Samatar
elmileedo@yahoo.com