The World Food Programme (WFP) said on August 16 that it has no plans to reduce aid to Somalia following allegations that international food shipments there are being diverted.
WFP spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said the agency is investigating alleged fraud but “there won't be any food reduction” even after The Associated Press reported that food staples meant for starving Somalis are being stolen and sold in markets around the capital of Mogadishu.
The WFP investigation so far has no evidence of a large-scale fraud scheme, Berthiaume told reporters in Geneva. She said WFP brings 5,000 tons a month of food into Somalia, and it would be implausible if half were diverted because “that would be a lot, and that would need a huge logistical operation.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations said the mortality rate among young children at a camp for Somali refugees in Ethiopia has reached alarming levels, with an average of 10 children under five dying every day since the Kobe camp in southeast Ethiopia was opened in June. The camp holds 25,000 refugees. A suspected measles outbreak combined with acute malnutrition is thought to be the cause of deaths, Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said.
Edwards told reporters that “this deadly combination has historically caused similar death rates in previous famine crises in the region.”
