Issue No. 719

Somalia's Humanitarian Crisis: Need and Greed

Decades of armed conflict, climate catastrophes, and famine have left nearly four million people displaced in Somalia. They overwhelmingly reside in almost 2,400 internally displaced person (IDP) camps dotted across the country. While these IDP camps, 85% of which are informal settlements on private land in urban areas, are supported by international donors, the current need far outstrips provision and capacity. Meanwhile, Somalia's various administrations are often reluctant to integrate IDPs into urban areas for a variety of reasons.

Cyclical and entrenched displacement in Somalia has formed particular ecosystems of corruption in these camps that impact aid distribution and day-to-day living. With the creation of informal settlements on peri-urban land owned by other clans, there is space rife for exploitation and siphoning off of money and aid. In late 2023, a UN investigation uncovered widespread theft of assistance by a number of actors along the humanitarian 'food chain.' In particular, IDP camp managers were singled out for charging rent on the land, insisting that IDPs surrender a portion of their food aid to camp officials in lieu of monetary payment. Two displaced persons described how they were lured to a camp with promises of a better life, only to have their financial aid siphoned off by the camp manager. One IDP said, "We were promised USD 130 but received only half." Ironically, the move to cash aid in Somalia was prompted by an earlier corruption scandal, but with camp visits by international humanitarian personnel restricted by insecurity, monitoring of humanitarian distribution remains far from robust.

In recent years, direct cash assistance has been increasingly touted as a solution to some of these issues, with the understanding that displaced and vulnerable communities know their needs better than external actors. In Somalia, though, this has also been implicated in corruption scandals where local officials tasked with identifying beneficiaries manipulate the system for personal gain, at times adding their families and friends to the recipient list. These officials, known as 'chairs' of constituents, are responsible for identifying vulnerable individuals, including orphans and people with disabilities, within their constituencies to receive financial assistance. While cash vouchers are supposed to be distributed to be exchanged for food, a portion of these funds are frequently withheld by the distributing partner. In some cases, these officials have coerced people into registering unrelated children as their own to secure additional aid.

Despite reform after reform and years of institutional knowledge, delivering aid, in whatever form, remains an immensely complex procedure in Somalia. However robust the mechanism established to prevent aid diversion, it is nigh impossible to stop the seeping of aid through one avenue or another. Even the Danab, the best-trained special forces in the Somali National Army, are not insulated from the country's political economy. And it is not just Somalia that has been embroiled in corruption scandals in the Horn lately, with senior federal Ethiopian officials too implicated in the massive diversion of humanitarian aid in 2023. Still, practical steps can always be taken to prevent aid diversion, including introducing extra oversight into the aid distribution process and better vetting of organisations tasked with aid distribution.

How years of displacement and aid have contributed to the formation of a highly-exploited urban underclass made up of disenfranchised youth more susceptible to violent extremism and crime has been much overlooked. While the Somali Bantu have long faced discrimination on ethnic grounds, their displacement from rural to urban has refracted these dynamics in new and disturbing ways as these disparate groups have gradually moved from agrarian communities to densely populated slums, working manual jobs that are perceived as low-worth by ethnic Somalis. The Somali Bantu, comprised of several distinct groups in southern Somalia, increasingly view themselves as a united and politically active force.

Last August, when the Bantu military officer Sheegow Ahmed Ali was arrested in Mogadishu for operating an armed group, protests erupted in both Baidoa and the capital. It signalled that the most marginalised group in Somalia was both increasingly armed and operating under a cohesive identity. And, subsequently, after decades of violent exploitation, it is becoming readily apparent that continuing to ignore these communities in IDP camps across central and southern Somalia is no longer sustainable. Engaging with the Bantu and others as equals, not using them as humanitarian bait or manual labour, cannot wait. Tackling the perennial corruption and malpractice in IDP camps across Somalia would be one place to start.

By the Somali Wire team