National Review: The U.N. 'Love Boat'

by BRETT D. SCHAEFER

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The World Food Program has rented out two passenger ships to accommodate many U.N. staff members off the coast of Haiti. At $112,500 per day, how much of these costs are passed off onto the U.S., the largest contributor to WFP.

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April 13, 2010

In a story posted last week on Fox News's website, George Russell laid out one of the most outrageous examples of poor judgment and profligacy seen in recent years from a U.N. organization. As Russell reports, two passenger ships (the Ola Esmeralda and the Sea Voyager) have been rented by the World Food Program — a U.N. humanitarian-relief organization — for $112,500 per day for the purposes of "accommodation for many of the U.N.'s international staff" off the coast of Haiti. The ships are also available to NGO workers and dignitaries such as Brazilian president Luiz Inacio da Silva, who recently visited the impoverished and earthquake-ravaged island. The total cost of renting these ships is projected to be over $10 million for the first 90 days. U.N. staff call one of the ships the "Love Boat."

Sensing that the news might not be received well, WFP quickly pulled down its own article (complete with pictures) about the ships. Russell preserved the story, however, and does a wonderful job of exposing the many questions surrounding WFP's decision to rent these ships. Among the highlights:

WFP is being overcharged, because the projected expense is millions of dollars more than what the ships would have been likely to earn through normal operation.

The Ola Esmeralda is owned by a Venezuelan company with close ties to Pres. Hugo Chavez.

Also included in the story is a revealing insight into the U.N. mindset. Russell asked Edmond Mulet, special representative in Haiti of the U.N. secretary general and head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission (MINUSTAH) in the country, about the decision. Mulet's answer, spread through several quotes in the story, was shocking: "It is the least we could do for them. They are working 14, 16 hours a day. The place was pulverized. Living conditions are really appalling. . . . [When] oxygen masks come down in a falling plane, the first thing you do is put them on yourself. You have to be in good shape in order to help the Haitians."

Apparently, a visit to the Lido Deck is just the thing for staying in "good shape."

Russell reports that if the two boats are fully booked, the cost to WFP is $181.81 per passenger per day for the Sea Voyager and $154.25 per passenger per day for the Ola Esmeralda. But U.N. staffers get to stay on the ships for $40 per day, and those participating in the U.N. peacekeeping mission get to stay for $20 per day. So WFP, even if the ship is full, provides each U.N. "passenger" a direct subsidy of up to $161.81 per day. But WFP doesn't really pay for it, of course; the taxpayers in the countries who contribute to WFP do. In 2008, the U.S. gave over $2 billion to WFP — about 40 percent of its total budget.

And as if that weren't enough, American taxpayers pay roughly a quarter of the expense of U.N. operations and staff salaries — expenditures that include a Daily Subsistence Allowance for U.N. staff of $244 dollars. Reasonable people might wonder, given that their daily allowances would more than cover it, why WFP is not charging U.N. staff the full cost of staying on the ships rather than $40 or $20 per day. Such is the regard U.N. agencies have for our hard-earned tax dollars.

This is just the latest in a series of missteps by WFP. For instance, according to a March 2010 report by the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia, "up to half of the food aid intended for needy Somalis is routinely diverted," and WFP food-aid delivery was dominated by three individuals (and their families and associates) linked to "arms sales and insurgent connections." A February 2010 story, also by Russell, detailed how WFP's relief effort in Afghanistan was inflated, with some outside experts saying that “some of the costs are more than 100 percent higher than they need to be."

Since the U.S. is by far the largest contributor to the World Food Program, Congress should take a keen interest in its activities in Haiti and elsewhere.

A Gulf in Giving: Oil-Rich States Starve the World Food Program

By George Russell

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354677,00.html

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his top lieutenants on Monday are convening the first meeting of the U.N.’s Task Force on the Global Food Crisis. Ban says it will “study the root causes of the crisis,” and propose solutions for “coordinated global action” at a summit of world leaders in June.

Ban might want to consider convincing the oil-rich nations of the Middle East to provide more than the near-invisible amount of money they currently give to the World Food Program (WFP), the U.N.’s food-giving arm, which is charged with alleviating the food crisis.

WFP internal documents show that the major oil producing nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) gives almost nothing to the food organization, even as skyrocketing oil prices and swollen oil revenues contribute to the very crisis that the U.N. claims could soon add 100 million more people to the world’s starving masses.

The overwhelming bulk of the burden in feeding the world’s starving poor remains with the United States and a small group of other predominately Western nations, a situation that the WFP has done little so far to change, even as it has asked for another $775 million in donations to ease the crisis.

Donor listings on WFP’s website show that this year, as in every year since 1999, the U.S. is far and away the biggest aid provider to WFP. Since 2001, U.S. donations to the food agency have averaged more than $1.16 billion annually — or more than five times as much as the next biggest donor, the European Commission.

Click here to see WFP's donor lists from 2001 to 2007.

This year, the U.S. had contributed $362.7 million to WFP just through May 4, according to the website. That figure does not include another $250 million above the planned yearly contribution that was promised by President George W. Bush in the wake of WFP’s April warning that a “silent tsunami” of rising food costs would add dramatically to the world population living in hunger. Nor does it include another $770 million in food aid that President Bush has asked Congress to provide as soon as possible.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia, with oil revenues last year of $164 billion, does not even appear on the website donor list for 2008.

Click here to see the 2008 donor list.

And while Canada, Australia, Western Europe and Japan have hastened to pony up an additional $260 million in aid since WFP’s latest appeal, the world organization told FOX News, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the international oil cartel, tossed in a grand total of $1.5 million in addition to the $50,000 it had previously donated.

The OPEC total amounts to roughly one minute and 10 seconds worth of the organization’s estimated $674 billion in annual oil revenues in 2007 — revenues that will be vastly exceeded in 2008 with the continuing spiral in world oil prices.

The only other major oil exporter who made the WFP list of 2008 donors was the United Arab Emirates, which kicked in $50,000. UAE oil revenues in 2007 were $63 billion.

By contrast, the poverty-stricken African republic of Burkina Faso is listed as donating more than $600,000, and Bangladesh, perennial home of many of the world’s hungriest people, is listed as donating nearly $5.8 million.

George Russell is executive editor of FOX News.

US curbs 'behind WFP Somali cuts'

By Martin Plaut
BBC News

The World Food Programme says US curbs are in part behind its move to shut its Somali feeding programmes for more than 100,000 acutely malnourished children.

The US restrictions affect funding for areas controlled by groups designated as terrorist.

Washington has imposed sanctions on the hardline Somali Islamist group, al-Shabab.

But the WFP says it is doing all it can to get the aid through without it being controlled by the Somali insurgents.

Drought and war has left 109,000 children-under-five acutely dependent on the feeding centres run by the WFP.

“ We take all precautions to ensure that our food only goes to the most needy ”
Josette Sheeran

But money has run out. The centres are closing, to focus the remaining resources on the most needy - babies under two years old, who would never recover from acute malnutrition.

Aid workers have told the BBC the cuts are the result of a freeze on funding by the United States Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the WFP, said she was unaware of a ban.

She continued: "We've heard of needing to deal with the particular restrictions they have on where aid goes and needing to look at whether or not we can work in compliance with those restrictions."

The US embargo is stopping American aid funds from reaching the vast areas of southern and central Somalia, where the UN estimates half the population is now in need of food aid.

Ms Sheeran said that "getting help to them inevitably involves dealing with al-Shabab and other hardline groups now in control of the towns and villages across the region".

"We take all precautions to ensure that our food only goes to the most needy and is not handled by any particular political groups in Somalia or elsewhere and in particular al-Shabab in Somalia," she said.

"We hope to work through these difficulties and challenges.

"Right now in Somalia, WFP has by far the biggest programme and there are very few aid groups left functioning there."

Ms Sheeran says the WFP is working with the administration of US President Barack Obama on an almost weekly basis to try to resolve these difficulties.

In the meantime the children of Somalia are going without the food they so badly need.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8259791.stm

UN Aid Diversion in Somalia Portrayed as Inevitable, Murky Investigation by WFP

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 16 -- Amid allegations that UN aid funds are being diverted in Somalia, leading to reported threats by the United Kingdom and U.S. to cut or condition their funding, Inner City Press on Wednesday asked top UN humanitarian John Holmes what the UN is doing.

Holmes said that the World Food Program has begun an internal investigation, and that he doesn't know how long it will take. He said it is mostly the U.S. that is concerned -- others name the UK first -- and that other donors just keep on giving. He said there is little choice but to continue. Videohere, from Minute 28:26.

Since the allegations focus on particular trucking companies that are being used, and their links to entities on anti-terrorism lists, Inner City Press asked Holmes what is being done about this, since such diversion would violate, in some cases, legal prohibitions. Holmes said that WFP is diversifying the number of trucking firms it works with. He did not address the legal question. (As reported earlier today, the UN's top legal refuses to answer questions other than on the narrow topics for which she appears for press conferences: today, the UN Treaty Event).

In a sense, there is not a contradiction between taking seriously and acting on these allegations of diversion of funds, and wanting the programs to continue. In fact, diversion leads to a lack of credibility, and ultimately hurts the programs' beneficiaries more.

UN's Ban gets award from WFP's Sheeran, diversion of UN aid in Somalia not shown

Merely referring problems to internal investigations, the time frame of which knows no limits, also hurts the UN's credibility, as has happened this summer in the months old investigation of the head of the UN's Congo Mission Alan Doss asking the UN Development Program for "leeway" to hire his daughter. It was relegated to an internal investigation, and nothing has been done. Watch this site.

Footnote: when during the summer's G-8 meeting WFP spent $400,000 to fly in children from Ghana for a "simulated feeding demonstration" for the G-8 leaders' spouses, neither Ban Ki-moon nor John Holmes for OCHA said there was anything wrong with this. This too undermines confidence in the UN, including by donors.