The experience I made last week made me really angry. No, it is not as much about the complicatedness of long-distance relationship issues and the heavy emotional baggage a humanitarian worker has to carry with him/her when doing the job he/she loves. No, it is also not about the fact that “high speed” internet here is so slow and unstable that I am even not able to upload a larger quantity of media, meaning somewhat more than 2-3 photos, about my stay in The Gambia, thereby failing to satisfy the legitimate expectations of my family, friends and employer when trying to follow up on what’s going on down here. Unfortunately, the topic of this week is corruption, in its most ugly form.
Yes, corruption in its meanest sense of the word, and I am not talking solely about “mismanagement” or "embezzlement" of resources, as some would like to wrap it up nicely in order not to make the embarrassment so plain and direct to whoever is (or not) involved in whatever aid issues. If we are talking about corruption than let us call the devil by his/her/it’s name: robbing the most vulnerable.
What happened? Well, one week ago I came back from a week long field trip in which we were distributing food to flood victims. So far distribution in several regions and communities went more or less without major disturbances and food was received by most of the beneficiaries. But at this region X it proved to be from the very beginning an organizational challenge. Spilled beans, missing rice bags, missing identity cards or heat were easy-to-handle problems, sometimes occurring also elsewhere.
Here, at the end of the day the big problem was corruption. Presenting itself in its most ugly form, it was about people trying to make profit from the suffering of others, in this case flood victims of whom many lost next to their upcoming harvest and available food stocks also the roof above their head with the entire little bit of other valuables. Since WFP is supposed to complement the government’s response efforts to floods by providing emergency food aid and logistical support, the distribution of monthly rations is still team work in which actors from various levels of government and affected communities are directly involved to ensure transparency, accountability and ownership of the entire distribution process.
However, what do you do when certain individuals from the government’s response framework, with whom you are supposed to work together in helping their own people in need, purposefully manipulate the process and sideline WFP in anticipation of a material gain, say, almost one ton of food items? Well, at the very least you investigate the matter with everyone present at the distribution point and this is what we had to do at the end in one of the cities, only to find out that some people we were working with had the intent to steal, or should I rather say “divert” food away from the genuine beneficiaries, through false beneficiaries into their own pockets, once WFP would leave.
For obvious reasons, I can not dwell here about the details as the issue is still a hot potato and the above summary should suffice. But what I can definitely say is that irrespective of us successfully regaining almost the entire amount of missing food items, and the investigation leading to concrete results to be hopefully followed up by the respective authorities, the discovery of such a misconduct is a very frustrating experience for any aid worker.
This is not only because you see on the spot the genuine beneficiaries who were the potential victims of a criminal activity (besides being already flood victims) but also because at the same spot you are facing all the time those who are not honest with you from the very outset, and thereby only discredit their hard-working colleagues with whom distribution is organized elsewhere. This is definitely not helpful in the view of future distributions and unfair to those who are genuinely trying to help their own people. In the end, everyone else will be suspicious but the victims will be always those will lose out double should any “inconsistencies” happen again in the future.
What did I personally learn from it? Playing Sherlock Holmes on the spot was something I did not expect at the very beginning but it definitely was a good experience that diversified my field of work. However, even though the experience was emotionally frustrating, on a still positive note, the whole matter made me even more alert for future distributions. What is most important, in the end it made me more committed and devoted to the objective of helping the genuine victims, despite or rather because of corrupt people trying to harm them, on top of the the natural calamity. It made me also realize once again that corruption should definitely be taken seriously into consideration any time we are talking about people's vulnerability status, especially of the poorest households.