Somalia: 'WFP Will Continue Its Aid Support in Somalis' - Official

Peter Somerton, the spokesman of the World Food Program (WFP) has Monday said that they will continue their aid support to the Somali people, just a day after Harakat Al-shabab Mujahideen issued a press release suspending whole activities of the agency.

"WFP will not stop providing food aid to the displaced Somalis in the camps. It will continue its work. How ever is possible for the staff of WFP can go ahead for their support, we shall continue our aiding the Somalis anymore," said the spokesman.

Speaking to Shabelle radio, Peter Somerton said, 'We will not consider the rulers, but our aim is to help the feeble and needy people of Somalia," he added.

The spokesman declined to comment on more about the repeated statements from the Islamic administration of Harakat Al-shabab Mujahdeen for suspending the program's activities in Somalia.

The statement of the World Food Program comes as press release banning its activities issued by Harkata Al-shabab Mujahideen in Somalia on Sunday.

UN agency acts on Somali food-aid claims

The UN's food agency has blacklisted three contractors named in a UN report which alleged that food aid in Somalia was being diverted.

The World Food Programme said it would not engage in any new work with the contractors and welcomed the report.

The WFP stressed that it had dealt with many of the concerns in the report.

The UN monitoring group document said corrupt contractors, militants and local UN workers were diverting food aid and selling it illegally.

Earlier this year, the WFP was forced to suspend food distribution in southern Somalia because of threats from armed groups.

Widespread corruption

"The integrity of our organisation is paramount and we will be reviewing and investigating each and every issue raised by this report," said WFP executive director, Josette Sheeran.

"WFP stands ready to offer full co-operation with any independent inquiry into its work in Somalia."

The UN document says up to half of the food aid in Somalia is diverted to a web of corrupt contractors, distributors, transporters and armed groups.

Some local UN workers are also accused of taking a cut in the profits.

It blames the problem on the food distribution system in the war-torn country, where transporters have to navigate roadblocks operated by various militias and bandits. Charges that food aid was being diverted first surfaced in 2009.

The US has since reduced funding to Somalia, fearing that aid was falling into the hands of the Islamist group al-Shabab.

The report, which was leaked to various media organisations this week, is due to be officially presented to the UN Security Council on 16 March.

UN food agency welcomes any probe into Somalia aid

ROME — A U.N. food agency said Thursday it will cooperate with any independent probe into its food operations in Somalia, after a report found that up to half the food aid intended for the nation's hungry people does not reach its destination.

The report said food aid in Somalia is being diverted to corrupt contractors, radical Islamic militants and local U.N. workers. It calls on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to authorize an independent investigation of the operations of the World Food Program in the country.

"The integrity of our organization is paramount and we will be reviewing and investigating each and every issue raised by this report," WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said in a statement.

"WFP stands ready to offer full cooperation with any independent inquiry into its work in Somalia," it said.

The Rome-based agency also promised not to engage with transport contractors that the report alleges were involved in arms trading.

The report was made by the panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against the African nation. It is to be presented to the U.N. Security Council next week, WFP says. The findings were first reported by The New York Times this week.

Sheeran said her organization "would do everything it could to reach the hungry in Somalia" — a country where around 3.7 million people, or nearly half of the population, need aid.

Sheeran said that "vulnerabilities are always present in conflict areas." Some of the issues raised in the report have already been addressed, she said, while in other cases the agency wanted to correct some factual information. She did not single out any issues.

The WFP suspended operations across southern Somalia in January. The agency said it was acting in response to intimidation of its staff and because armed groups have made "unreasonable demands ... that contravened WFP's rules."

Somalia Food Aid Bypasses Needy, U.N. Study Finds

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and NEIL MacFARQUHAR

As much as half the food aid sent to Somalia is diverted from needy people to a web of corrupt contractors, radical Islamist militants and local United Nations staff members, according to a new Security Council report.

The report, which has not yet been made public but was shown to The New York Times by diplomats, outlines a host of problems so grave that it recommends that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon open an independent investigation into the World Food Program’s Somalia operations. It suggests that the program rebuild the food distribution system — which serves at least 2.5 million people and whose aid was worth about $485 million in 2009 — from scratch to break what it describes as a corrupt cartel of Somali distributors.

In addition to the diversion of food aid, regional Somali authorities are collaborating with pirates who hijack ships along the lawless coast, the report says, and Somali government ministers have auctioned off diplomatic visas for trips to Europe to the highest bidders, some of whom may have beenpirates or insurgents.

Somali officials denied that the visa problem was widespread, and officials for the World Food Program said they had not yet seen the report but would investigate its conclusions once it was presented to the Security Council next Tuesday.

The report comes as Somalia’s transitional government is preparing for a major military offensive to retake the capital, Mogadishu, and combat an Islamist insurgency with connections to Al Qaeda.

The United States is providing military aid, as the United Nations tries to roll back two decades of anarchy in the country.

But it may be an uphill battle. According to the report, Somalia’s security forces “remain ineffective, disorganized and corrupt — a composite of independent militias loyal to senior government officials and military officers who profit from the business of war.”

One American official recently conceded that Somalia’s “best hope” was the government’s new military chief, a 60-year-old former artillery officer who, until a few months ago, was assistant manager at a McDonald’s in Germany.

The report’s investigators, part of the Monitoring Group on Somalia, were originally asked to track violations of the United Nations arms embargo on Somalia, but the mandate was expanded.

Several of the report’s authors have received death threats, and the United Nations recently relocated them from Kenya to New York for safety reasons.

Possible aid obstructions have been a nettlesome topic for Somalia over the past year and have contributed to delays in aid shipments by the American government and recent suspensions of food programs in some areas by United Nations officials.

The report singles out the World Food Program, the largest aid agency in the crisis-racked country, as particularly flawed.

“Some humanitarian resources, notably food aid, have been diverted to military uses,” the report said. “A handful of Somali contractors for aid agencies have formed a cartel and become important power brokers — some of whom channel their profits, or the aid itself, directly to armed opposition groups.”

These allegations of food aid diversions first surfaced last year. The World Food Program has consistently denied finding any proof of malfeasance and said that its own recent internal audit found no widespread abuse.

“We have not yet seen the U.N. Somalia Monitoring Group report,” the World Food Program’s deputy executive director, Amir Abdulla, said Tuesday. “But we will investigate all of the allegations, as we have always done in the past if questions have been raised about our operations.”

The current report’s investigators question how independent that past audit was, and called for a new outside investigation of the United Nations agency.

“We have to tell these folks that you cannot go on like this — we know what you are doing, you can’t fool us anymore, so you better stop,” said PresidentAli Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, who was at the United Nations, where his country holds the presidency of the Security Council this month.

The report also charges that Somali officials are selling spots on trips to Europe and that many of the people who are presented as part of an official government entourage are actually pirates or members of militant groups.

The report says that Somali officials use their connections to foreign governments to get visas and travel documents for people who would not otherwise be able to travel abroad and that many of these people then disappear into Europe and do not come back.

“Somali ministers, members of Parliament, diplomats and ‘freelance brokers’ have transformed access to foreign visas into a growth industry, matched possibly only by piracy,” selling visas for $10,000 to $15,000 each, the report said.

The report’s authors estimate that dozens, if not hundreds of Somalis have gained access to Europe or beyond through this under-the-table visa business.

Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya, said: “Maybe there’s been one or two cases that have happened over the years. But these are just rumors. These allegations have been going around for years.”

The report also takes aim at some of Somalia’s richest, most influential businessmen, Somalia’s so-called money lords. One, Abdulkadir M. Nur, known as Eno, is married to a woman who plays a prominent role in a local aid agency that is supposed to verify whether food aid is actually delivered. That “potential loophole” could “offer considerable potential of large-scale diversion,” the report said.

The report accuses Mr. Nur of staging the hijacking of his own trucks and later selling the food.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Nur said he had sent the investigators many documents that “showed very clearly that the gossip and rumors they are investigating are untrue,” including the alleged hijacking or any link to insurgents. He said that his wife merely sat on the board of the local aid agency and that only “a tiny fraction” of the food he transported was designated for that aid agency.

In September, Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, wrote a letter to Secretary General Ban, defending Mr. Nur as a “very conscientious, diligent and hard-working person” and saying that if it were not for the contractors, “many Somalis would have perished.”

The report questions why the World Food Program would steer 80 percent of its transportation contracts for Somalia, worth about $200 million, to three Somali businessmen, especially when they are suspected of connections to Islamist insurgents.

The report says that fraud is pervasive, with about 30 percent of aid skimmed by local partners and local World Food Program personnel, 10 percent by the ground transporters and 5 to 10 percent by the armed group in control of the area. That means as much as half of the food never makes it to the people who desperately need it.

In January, the United States halted tens of millions of dollars of aid shipments to southern Somalia because of fears of such diversions, and American officials believe that some American aid may have fallen into the hands of Al Shabab, the most militant of Somalia’s insurgent groups.

The report also said that the president of Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northern Somalia, had extensive ties to pirates in the area, who then funneled some of the money they made from hijacking ships to authorities.

Puntland authorities could not be reached on Tuesday, but Mr. Aden, the Somali diplomat, dismissed the allegations, saying that the Puntland government had jailed more than 150 pirates and that it had not “received a penny from them.”

“It’s unfortunate that this monitoring group thinks they can stick everything on the Somalis,” he said.

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Gisenyi, Rwanda, and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.

Sticker Shock: Experts Say World Food Program's Afghan Relief Effort Overpriced

Saturday , February 06, 2010

By George Russell

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The United Nations’ World Food Program, or WFP, is preparing to launch a mammoth, three-year relief operation in Afghanistan this year for 7.4 million people at a cost of $1.2 billion — but less than half of that amount will actually go to purchasing food for the war-ravaged country.

The majority of the money — nearly $730 million — is being spent on shipping, land transportation, handling, office construction and U.N. staffing and administration costs, according to program documents obtained by Fox News. Outside experts consulted by Fox News say that some of the costs are more than 100 percent higher than they need to be.

WFP’s response is that some of its costs are actually less than in the past, and that higher expenses are required because of the nature of the new relief operation. In other words, they say they’re inefficient because they need to be.

The WFP program is expected to come up for approval at a meeting of WFP’s 37–member Executive Board beginning on Feb. 8 in Rome. By far, the biggest share of the $1.2 billion relief tab is likely to come from the U.S., which picked up 47 percent of the cost of WFP’s previous Afghan relief program.

Just as arresting as the size of the new WFP program is the way the money is being spent. Less than 40 percent of the total is expected to purchase nearly 816,882 metric tons of food for the program, at a projected cost of $474.7 million.

An evaluation report of WFP’s last major Afghan food relief project, done by independent outside consultants and also intended for next week’s executive board meeting, noted that food costs made up 52 percent of the total relief budget in an $878 million effort that covered 390 of 398 administrative districts in the country. (That operation offered relief to about 6.5 million Afghans per year; the new operation aims to help 7.4 million.)

The same report noted that a 52 percent ratio of food costs to total spending was similar to WFP food relief operations elsewhere, and “can be taken as an indicator of efficiency.”

This time, even though its new relief project is very similar in many respects to its previous Afghan program — which ran for more than four years — WFP’s food costs make up 39.5 percent of the total.

In its latest project proposal documents, the organization notes mildly that the “fluid security environment and limited infrastructure in Afghanistan” mean that “operational and support costs are higher than average.”

In response to questions from Fox News, WFP further replied that “moving goods to and within Afghanistan is more expensive due to increased competition and congestion on limited available transportation routes.” It also cited the need to construct additional warehouses and replace 55 trucks in a WFP fleet of 150.

Most of the food itself, WFP said, would be purchased on international markets “through a transparent tendering process.”

Outside shipping and grain handling experts who are familiar with conditions in the region, nonetheless, told Fox News that they consider some the WFP costs, notably for transportation and handling, to be roughly double what is commercially required. The amounts run into tens of millions of dollars.

Moreover, some of the most outsized costs, according to those experts, are incurred outside Afghanistan, where the security and infrastructure issues cited as justification by WFP do not apply.

Among other things, the experts, who are familiar with transportation of grain and other commodities in the central Asian region, pointed to:

— “External transport” costs of $60 million: Essentially, shipping grain and other foodstuffs, mainly to ports such as Karachi in Pakistan and, to a much lesser extent, Bandar Abbas in Iran, for subsequent transit to Afghanistan.

That would work out to more than $73 per metric ton of relief supplies shipped, if all of them came from abroad. In fact, WFP says the shipping costs would be even higher: $101 per metric ton, as the operation intends to buy 92,000 metric tons of local wheat as part of its operation. The relief agency says that its projected prices are actually a saving over the overseas shipping costs of its last operation.

Using their most generous estimates, the experts consulted by Fox News judged that the actual cost of overseas food shipping should run to somewhere between $33 and $50 per metric ton — or between one-half and one-third the price projected by WFP.

— “Landside transport” costs of nearly $60.2 million: Trucking from Pakistan and Iran to centers such as Kandahar, Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, plus $74.5 million in anticipated “internal transport, storage and handling” charges as the food moves to much smaller Afghan outposts for distribution.

Experts consulted by Fox News calculated that the WFP shipping estimates were roughly 100 percent more expensive than required — and once again, that did not factor in local grain purchases, which would lower the landside and internal transportation costs even further. Moreover, current international fuel costs have declined substantially since their sky-high price hikes of 2007, which should also moderate costs. The same declines have also helped to cause a substantial moderation in international food prices.

WFP’s response is that its new program requires building seven new sub-offices, atop eight already in existence, to handle its expanded distribution, and said some of the additional transportation funds would be used to buy 55 new trucks for its operations. It also argues that its operations are substantially different than in the past, due to its local food purchases and additional security needs.

Local security is a deadly serious matter for WFP: One of its security guards was killed in a terrorist bomb blast in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in late December. But $15 million in local security costs allocated for the new food relief program in Afghanistan do not form part of the transportation, storage and handling totals in the new proposed plan, but are itemized separately.

WFP also said some of the high prices would result from diversifying its “transport corridors” for funneling food into Afghanistan via a “northern corridor” — a veiled reference to a shipment through Iran. Its project documents, however, say that the alternative corridors “may” be used, but only "depending on the cost efficiency of local transporters and overall conditions.”

Indeed, the documents say that precisely because of increased traffic on those corridors, they are unlikely to replace traditional overland transport routes.

— Staffing: U.N. staffing costs are $57 million, as compared to local staffing costs of $36.2 million. The 115 U.N. staffers planned for the operation are also eligible for “hazard pay and hardship allowance,” which adds another $26.3 million to their cost, bringing the total for U.N. employees salaries and allowances to $83.3 million.

That is more than the entire budgeted cost for “internal transport, storage and handling” of the food involved. According to an official with a highly respected U.S. aid group that also works in Afghanistan, WFP salaries for staffers are “double” what the U.S. agency pays.

By contrast, the international staffing plans for the first three years of its previous food aid program in Afghanistan — which aimed to help about 6.6 million Afghans, or nearly 90 percent of the number targeted in the new plan — ran to only $22.5 million, including hazard pay.

— Helicopters: Rental costs for six helicopters during the life of the program run to more than $118 million, or more than half a million dollars per helicopter per month. The WFP budget contains an additional $14.5 million for actual running costs, meaning mainly fuel. Total: $132.5 million.

WFP justifies the cost in its program documents by arguing that the machines “will allow WFP staff to travel more frequently and rapidly and will improve performance measurement and allow continuous oversight, ensuring a proper level of accountability and transparency to all stakeholders.”

“Except for the space shuttle, helicopters are the most expensive form of transportation on the planet,” rejoins a transportation expert consulted by Fox News. Nonetheless, he estimated that rental, maintenance and operating costs, including fuel, for “medium-sized” helicopters should be no higher than $78.2 million.

Overall, one of the experts consulted by Fox News estimated that the total cost of the food transportation, handling and delivery portion of the program ought to run to no more than $100 million — and even then, he added, “there is so much fat in [the estimate] that I can’t make it more.”

Instead, the total for those items in the proposed WFP budget comes to $195.56 million, with “direct support costs” — meaning WFP’s staffing costs, equipment, communications and office space, plus equipment leasing and security — adding another $318 million.

Click here to see WFP's proposed cost breakdown

All told, the WFP plan calls for spending an average of about $1,474 for each metric ton of food aid delivered, even though world grain prices have eased dramatically from their sudden peaks in 2007-2008, and a bumper harvest is expected in Afghanistan in 2009-2010. The previous WFP aid plan averaged $848 per metric ton delivered over its four-year span. But within that total, costs were also escalating: The last three months of the previous plan, slated to cover from January to March 2010, are planned at an average $1,026 of total costs per metric ton.

WFP says such comparisons are invalid, due to the differences between the current and previous plans.

Part of the bill for the proposed new food operation in Afghanistan is a 7 percent levy on the gross cost — common to all WFP projects — that adds up in this case to $78.8 million. That money goes back to WFP’s Rome headquarters to pay for its central and regional overhead.

By the levy’s very nature, the bigger the overall cost for WFP operations, the bigger the dollar amount of the headquarters 7 percent share.

This is not the first time that WFP’s transportation and handling costs have seemed significantly oversized in relation to the program they are supporting. Last July, Fox News pointed out that WFP project documents for planned relief operations showed average “external” shipping costs of $206.90 per metric ton of food aid that was supposed to be delivered to North Korea — an amount that was nearly 50 percent of the planned food purchase involved, and which an expert on bulk shipping consulted by Fox News termed “absolutely ridiculous.”

Part of that money — WFP did not reveal how much — was apparently destined to pay for shipping from China to North Korea on vessels controlled by the government of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. The North Korean government is under United Nations sanctions, including financial sanctions, that have so far been dramatically unsuccessful in forcing the communist nation to put a brake on its burgeoning nuclear weapons program.

Questions Are Raised About Who Profits from U.N. Aid to North Korea

In the end, only 18 percent of that food program was ever funded by WFP donors, due to North Korea’s intransigence over its nuclear weapons program and its refusal to allow full inspection of its food delivery sites.

WFP’s partner in the upcoming Afghan food aid program is the government of Afghanistan, led by President Hamid Karzai, whose various ministries will be working with WFP in virtually every phase of its program. The corruption of the Karzai administration has been a subject of open discussion among the governments now showering Afghanistan with aid.

As recently as last November, President Obama personally urged Karzai to clean up his government and bring some of its more blatantly corrupt senior officials to justice.

For his part, Karzai has admitted that “Afghanistan has been tarnished by administrative corruption” and promised to lead a clean-up campaign.

Goodly portions of WFP’s food aid program are also taking place in parts of the country where battles have raged with the fundamentalist Taliban — who the U.S. and other allies have now decided to begin wooing, at least to some degree.

When asked how WFP proposed to keep food aid out of the hands of actively hostile Taliban members, the agency replied only that “in line with humanitarian principles, WFP food assistance is targeted to hungry people who are assessed as needing our food assistance.”

There is little doubt that Afghanistan is in dire need of the kind of help that WFP provides. As the WFP project documents report, the country, which has been a battleground for the past 30 years, has a badly undernourished, under-educated population of about 26 million; 3.1 million of them still live in refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

About 59 percent of Afghans suffer from malnutrition, and 33 percent are underweight. Afghanistan also has the dubious distinction of the world’s highest rate of active tuberculosis, averaging 213 cases per 100,000 population; about 40,000 new cases are added every year.

Most of WFP’s planned new program of food aid — as it was in its previous program — is aimed at the most vulnerable members of Afghan society: children, pregnant and nursing women, refugees. Many of the aid programs are aimed not merely at feeding the chronically malnourished but also, in collaboration with other U.N. agencies, at encouraging women to remain in school —most leave after the fifth grade — as well as supporting anti-tuberculosis campaigns.

Some of the food aid will to go support community and agricultural improvement projects, such as low-tech irrigation. In addition, as it underlined in its responses to Fox News, WFP is also aiming to help subsistence farmers who have managed to grow extra crops get better prices for their surpluses.

Click here to see WFP's entire proposal.

Indeed, the Afghan government seems to prefer that WFP buy food even when it is available for free.

According to a 2009 food security update published by USAID in November, the neighboring Indian government offered the Karzai administration 250,000 tons of wheat — the main Afghan staple — as a donation. The Afghan government “postponed” the offer, according to USAID, over fears that such large amounts of free grain might depress prices for local farmers.

If past experience is any guide, the $1.2 billion estimate for WFP’s Afghan food aid project may only be the beginning. The proposed program is a follow-on to an emergency feeding project in Afghanistan that began in January 2006 as a three-year effort to assist 6.6 million Afghans with 520,000 metric tons of food—at a total cost to WFP of $360 million. By the time the program ends next March, it will have lasted 39 months, purchased 1,000 metric tons of food — and climbed in cost by nearly 250 percent.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.

U.S. To Consider Purchasing Some Food Aid Locally, Acting USAID Head Says At World Food Summit

The U.S. is interested in potentially using more locally-produced food aid rather than U.S. grown food as a way to expand investment in agricultural development in the developing world, said Alonzo Fulgham, acting head USAID, "on the sidelines of a World Food Summit in Rome" on Tuesday, Reuters reports. "The United States is the largest food donor in the world but Washington has been criticized by non-governmental organizations for shipping too much U.S.-grown food to hunger-stricken areas," the news service writes.

According to Fulgham, "Our country is looking at the policy and identifying where we should be buying food locally to increase capacity. … That is all part of our new strategy and the new administration is looking very strongly at it but like all rules ... it has to be negotiated and discussed in Congress."

When discussing the G8’s $22 billion three-year agriculture initiative, "Fulgham reiterated Washington's position that this money would best be channeled through a fund administered by the World Bank, whose head is normally appointed by the United States" (Flynn, 11/17).

At the summit on Monday, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad) and the World Food Program (WFP) launched "a food-security strategy to help developing nations address food insecurity by investing in agriculture and safety nets, to address hunger exacerbated by the food and financial crises and climate change," BusinessMirrorreports (Abano, 11/17).

According to an FAO statement, "The agencies will address overlaps, find additional synergies … This builds on a portfolio of 400 activities involving collaboration in more than 70 countries. All areas of work are being addressed. In the administrative area, collaboration is aimed at achieving cost reduction, efficiency savings, streamlined business processes and knowledge sharing. Joint tendering and the piloting of a common procurement unit starting in January 2010 are a few examples" (11/16).

Summit Fails To Deal With Large Agri-Business Market Dominance, U.N. Official Says

"In a speech to the summit released on Tuesday before delivery," U.N. Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter said delegates had not done enough to address large agri-business corporations' food market dominance, according to a second Reuters article.

De Schutter "said private agri-business corporations operated 'without any sort of control and with often extremely high levels of concentration that represent a serious market failure.'" He noted that the summit declaration is "silent about the right of agricultural workers to a living wage." De Schutter "also said the summit declaration was weak on the production and use of biofuels and on commodity market speculation, despite the impact of both on prices."

At a recent U.N. forum, food and agriculture businesses "said they were already investing millions of dollars in sustainable farm development to secure reliable supplies, cut costs and boost positions on new markets" (Aloisi, 11/17). During his speech, De Schutter noted that failure to address "what he saw as the key factors behind price spikes in 2008" would result in a "new food price crisis," another Reuters articles reports. In an interview, he said, "There are indications already, because oil prices are going up and they are very closely linked to agricultural commodities prices. As soon as a big producer will be in difficulty ... speculation will set in" (Aloisi [2], 11/17).

IPS Examines Farmers' Forum

Though "farmers are not part of the official delegations" at the world food summit, "they came anyhow to express their views, since, they say, it is their communities that are most impacted by the food crisis," Inter Press Service Europe writes in an article examining farmers' perspective on food security.

"Small-scale producers from the Amazonian rainforest, from Africa, the Pacific islands and the Himalayas gathered in Rome for the Peoples' Food Sovereignty Forum (Nov. 13-17), held in parallel to the FAO meetings, to discuss the serious effects of the crisis in their communities." According to the forum organizers, there are more than 1.5 billion small food producers in the world and they "produce more than 75 percent of the world's food needs through peasant agriculture and small scale livestock production, and with artisanal fishing" (Zaccaro, 11/18).

News Outlets Examine Summit Outcome

The Financial Times reports: "The latest in a series of fairly fruitless international gatherings ends on Wednesday in Rome, as the United Nations food security summit draws to a halt amid a plethora of platitudes about feeding the poor." According to the newspaper, "The broad approach of the summit is right to recognise that achieving a safe, reliable, affordable supply of food is a multi-faceted project: technology, trade, markets and aid all need to be addressed. But translating this into practical action has proved difficult – not least because agriculture, with its concentrated groups of farmers and agribusinesses and diffuse groups of consumers, has proved peculiarly susceptible to producer group lobbying." The article looks at some of the reasons why it is challenging to address hunger around the world (Beattie, 11/17).

Incidents involving some world leaders "bolstered criticism" that this week's summit "is long on rhetoric and extravagance and short on solutions for the world's 1 billion hungry," the Associated Press reports in an article examining why some view the meeting as a failure. The article discusses the actions of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe who has been "blamed for plunging his people into starvation" (David/D’Emilio, 11/17).

At the summit on Tuesday, Mugabe "defended his controversial decade-long land reform program as a matter of 'equity and justice' and blamed the country's dramatic economic collapse in recent years on what he described as 'neocolonialist enemies' in the West who have imposed sanctions," VOA News reports (Zulu, 11/17). Mugabe – who "is banned from visiting the European Union except under special circumstances, such as United Nations conferences" – called for "the West lift the 'illegal and inhuman sanctions' imposed on him and his government," the Telegraph writes (Squires, 11/17).

According to an article in GlobalPost examining Mugabe's appearance at the food summit, "Zimbabweans – black and white alike – see the irony of Mugabe grasping at the chance to attend an international conference where the theme is food security. Mugabe's policies have turned Zimbabwe from a nation with bountiful harvests to a country perennially d

Kenya: Toxic Maize Pits Farmers Against WFP

Daniel Nyassy

12 October 2009

http://allafrica.com/stories/200910121382.html

Nairobi — About 238 bags of highly toxic maize have disappeared from stores at the Bura Irrigation and Settlement Scheme in a case that is pitting the WFP against farmers in the region.

Fears abound that the maize may have been stolen and found its way into the market.

But the circumstances under which the consignment disappeared from the National Irrigation Board (NIB) godown at Bura are puzzling, and so are the stunning tales from the farmers.

The aflatoxin levels in the missing maize are quite high, and is a real threat to human life. The dangerous maize is said to be on sale in parts of Garissa and Mwingi towns.

Our two days camping at Bura over the weekend revealed that the issue has put World Food Programme (WFP) at the centre of the saga with farmers accusing the international organization of an underhand deal to deny them cash.

The manager, Bura Irrigation and Settlement Scheme (BISS) Mr Ben Masawe, declined to comment on the issue, terming it as "very sensitive".

"Our job was to facilitate the farmers with the land and how to take care of the crop. After harvesting, we had nothing to do with it. Whether the maize was toxic or where they sold it, it's not our problem," he said and referred Nation to the District Commissioner Mr Reuben Loyotanan and the Bura Farmers Cooperative Society (BFCS) chairlady Ms Rose Atieno Ochieng.

The matter now had been handed over to the police after the blame game went on for three months with numerous meetings between stakeholders bearing no fruit. Meanwhile, the toxic maize continues to pose great threat to human life.

The farmers on the other hand do not believe the maize is toxic and that most think that it was WFP's ploy to deny them income.

A letter from the Bura District Public Health Officer, Mr Elvis Dhadho, to the DC dated October 2, 2009 instructs the DCs office to investigate the matter urgently.

Titled: "Disappearance of seized white grain whole maize, unweighed 238 bags" the letter urged the DC to carry out "full investigation of the matter which is by law a contravention under Section 30 (10) of The Food, Drugs and Chemical Substances Act, Cap 254 Laws of Kenya".

Mr Dhadho says the condemned maize stock had been seized by his office after WFP declared it highly toxic and unfit for human consumption.

"The stock was officially seized by my officers after analysis report from WFP indicated high levels of aflatoxin in 975 bags of 50kgs which were in the process of being purchased by WFP from the Bura Farmers Cooperative Society".

The officer added that a series of consultative meetings and joint collaboration interventions between the DC's office, NIB manager, WFP representatives, Equity Bank (which gave a loan to the farmers to grow the disputed maize), public health officers and cooperative representatives in the month of September had failed to resolve the matter.

According to Mr Dhadho, WFP made their report vide a letter dated September 23, 2009 declaring the maize unsafe.

According to WFP's report, samples of the maize were tested in Europe where it was found to have unacceptable levels of aflatoxin.

It says only 10 parts per billion units is the globally acceptable level of aflatoxin. However, the Government accepts upto 20 parts per billion or higher for livestock.

But the Bura maize was found to contain between 890 and 3,800 parts per billion making it extremely dangerous for human and even livestock consumption.

The DC, like the irrigation scheme manager Mr Masawe, wants his office left out of the saga saying it had nothing to do with the business between WFP and the farmers.

"We were not involved from the beginning. It was a project between the irrigation scheme, farmers and WFP. We can't be blamed for the disappearance of the maize which was kept by the farmers and WFP," he said.

He said what he knew was that WFP wanted to buy 975 bags from the farmers and actually bought the first consignment of 500 bags.

"When the maize tested unfit, WFP went ahead to compensate the farmers. They even brought 1,000 bags of maize which they bought from elsewhere in order to give to the farmers as compensation," he said.

The 90 farmers who claim they lost more than Sh12 million in the deal with WFP vehemently dispute the aflatoxin theory of the public health officer and the international organization and dismiss the compensation story.

The Treasurer of the cooperative Mzee Magiri Manene says, "This whole issue is a rip-off. We were selling our maize to local market before at Sh2,000 per bag. We had sold 3,000 bags to Mwingi in the previous harvest before WFP came in".

He said WFP convinced them that they would buy their crop at a better price of Sh 2,600 per bag "and we accepted".

Said Mzee Manene, "WFP came and supervised the growing of the disputed crop all the way to harvesting and storage. All along they confirmed that our maize was perfect.

"They stored it under their supervision in the godown and used their preservative chemicals. Later they even put it in WFP branded bags. How did the maize suddenly turn toxic?"

He said sometime after WFP took the samples away, they sent word that they would come back and buy more maize from the farmers.

"I went out of my way to get 270 extra bags when they told us they would arrive on September 19 to buy more maize," he said adding that the farmers from nine villages of the scheme were shocked beyond explanation when, upon arrival, WFP declared their maize contaminated and unfit.

"What surprised us even more is that WFP brought 1,000 bags of worse maize claiming they were compensating us. This maize is old and mixed with other grains and can not even be sold to consumers," he said.

The chairperson Ms Rose Atieno says, "If they wanted to compensate us, why didn't they give us money? Why give us maize? We agreed they would pay us money for our maize, not maize", she said.

Farmers have cried foul, claiming that thereis more than meets the eye in the whole saga. She said they are unable to service a Sh 12 million loan from Equity Bank which they hoped to pay back after the WFP deal.

Of the 238 bags of disappeared maize, Ms Atieno said farmers went to the cooperative officials and demanded it back following the circus.

"The farmers took their maize away and sold it or consumed it in their homes," she said and asked why no one died from eating this maize if indeed it was toxic.

The farmers want WFP and the ministry of Public health to come clear on the matter and explain to the nation what the truth is.