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U.S. Suspends Food Aid for Ethiopia, Citing Widespread Theft U.S. Suspends Food Aid for Ethiopia, Citing Widespread Theft
(about 5 hours later)
The United States suspended all food aid to Ethiopia on Thursday, citing “widespread and coordinated” theft of the contributions in a country where at least 20 million people need donated food. The United States on Thursday suspended all food aid to Ethiopia, where its contributions feed an estimated 12 million people, citing “widespread and coordinated” theft of emergency rations in a countrywide scheme overseen by Ethiopian government officials.
The United States is by far the largest aid donor to Ethiopia, with 120 million people, Africa’s second most populous country, so the impact of the suspension is likely to hit hard and fast. The unusual decision was likely to hit hardest the millions of vulnerable Ethiopians already reeling from the combined effects of civil conflicts, climate change and swarms of locusts that devoured crops.
Ethiopians are already reeling from the combined impact of civil conflicts, climate change and swarms of locusts that devoured crops. The United States gave $1.5 billion in aid to Ethiopia, more than two-thirds of that in food, in the last fiscal year, which ended in September, 2022. But American officials said the scale of misappropriation left them with no option but to halt the deliveries until the system had been fixed. The discovery that American aid had been stolen in Ethiopia on an “industrial scale,” as one senior American official put it, was also another blow to Washington’s already-strained relations with Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most-populous nation, with 120 million people, and once a key American ally.
The United States is by far the largest aid donor to Ethiopia, where about 20 million people depend on food aid. In the past fiscal year, it gave $1.5 billion in aid, more than two-thirds of that in food. Although a significant amount of that aid reached the hungry, American officials said they had discovered misappropriation on a scale that left them with no choice but to halt the deliveries.
“We made the difficult but necessary decision that we cannot move forward with distribution of food assistance until reforms are in place,” the U.S. Agency for International Development said in a statement. “Our intention is to immediately resume food assistance once we are confident in the integrity of delivery systems.”“We made the difficult but necessary decision that we cannot move forward with distribution of food assistance until reforms are in place,” the U.S. Agency for International Development said in a statement. “Our intention is to immediately resume food assistance once we are confident in the integrity of delivery systems.”
The statement did not say who stole the food. But a briefing document by the Humanitarian and Resilience Donor Group, a group of foreign donors including USAID, blamed Ethiopian “federal and regional government entities” it said had diverted the food to “military units across the country.” The USAID statement did not say who stole the food. But a briefing document by the Humanitarian and Resilience Donor Group, a coalition of foreign donors including USAID, said the scheme “appeared to be orchestrated by federal and regional government of Ethiopia entities, with military units across the country benefiting from humanitarian assistance.”
The decision comes against a backdrop of tense relations between the United States and Ethiopia, once a key American partner. Two years of civil war in the northern Tigray region between forces of the federal government and regional leaders, which ended with a settlement announced last November, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and accusations of abuses by all sides. A senior USAID official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, confirmed that account. After an extensive investigation in seven of Ethiopia’s nine regions, American officials uncovered “probably the largest scale diversion that we have seen, at least in recent history,” the official said.
Rights groups and Western officials accused Ethiopian forces of ethnic cleansing, mass rape and using food as a weapon of war during the campaign. In September 2021, President Joe Biden threatened sweeping sanctions that drew a furious response from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. But American officials, whose tense relations with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia had been slowly warming in recent months, were reluctant to publicly blame the Ethiopian government for the diversion of American aid.
The U.S. Agency for International Development had already suspended aid to Tigray on May 3 after it discovered that food assistance there was being rerouted and sold in local markets. The World Food Program paused its operations in Tigray in April after it too discovered that food aid was being diverted. The USAID administrator, Samantha Power, promised “a thorough review” of its programs in Tigray, where most of the region’s six million people rely on food assistance. After a meeting on Thursday with Ethiopia’s deputy prime minister, Demeke Mekonnen, on the sidelines of a conference in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, said he welcomed Ethiopia’s commitment “to work together to conduct a full investigation” into the missing aid, and “to hold accountable those found responsible.”
Since late March, USAID staff visited 63 flour mills in seven of Ethiopia’s nine regions, where they witnessed a “significant diversion” of American food aid, said the donor group’s briefing document, which described a “coordinated and criminal scheme” that deprived Ethiopia’s “most vulnerable” citizens of lifesaving assistance. A spokeswoman for Ethiopia’s prime minister did not respond to a request for comment. But in a joint statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, the two governments committed “to collaborate toward an efficient aid distribution system” that would “safeguard assistance from diversion.”
American investigators also found evidence that food from other countries had been stolen, as well, including wheat donated by France, Japan and Ukraine through the United Nations World Food Program, the largest food aid organization in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has endured one of the worst droughts in decades in the Horn of Africa. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the suffering, causing inflation and unemployment to rise. Locusts and conflict decimated the agricultural sector in some areas.
The decision to suspend all American food aid will likely have major ramifications in Ethiopia, where several regions are currently enduring one of the worst droughts to sweep the Horn of Africa in decades. Relations between the United States and Ethiopia plunged during the two-year civil war in the northern Tigray region between forces of the federal government and regional leaders, which ended with a settlement in November. It was, by many estimates, the deadliest war this century, resulting in about 600,000 deaths and accusations of gross abuses by all sides.
Below-average rain, locusts and internal conflict have decimated the agricultural sector. At least 4.5 million livestock animals have also perished because of decreased grazing areas and water in the Oromia and Somali regions, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Ethiopian forces, in particular, faced accusations of ethnic cleansing, mass rape and using food as a weapon of war during the campaign. In September 2021, President Biden threatened sweeping sanctions that drew a furious response from Mr. Abiy.
The civil war and the Covid-19 pandemic have also exacerbated the economic situation in the country, leading to rising inflation and unemployment, shrinking safety nets and decreased foreign investments. Human Rights Watch said last week that ethnic cleansing had continued in western Tigray since the November peace deal and that much of it was orchestrated by local officials.
But some Western countries are keen to edge back toward normal ties with Mr. Abiy. In April, a delegation from the International Monetary Fund visited Addis Ababa to discuss Ethiopian requests for emergency funds, which would require American assent to be approved.
Around that time, though, USAID officials were beginning to make alarming discoveries about their food aid program in Tigray, where most of the six million residents rely on food assistance to survive, and it quickly spiraled into a much wider investigation, according to the senior USAID official.
During five trips to Tigray in April, American officials discovered evidence of “widespread and systematic diversion of assistance,” the USAID official said. Instead of being delivered to the needy, food aid was being rerouted to commercial mills and sold on local markets.
In testimony to Congress on April 26, the USAID administrator, Samantha Power, cited evidence of “collusion between parties on both sides of the conflict,” referring to the Ethiopian and regional Tigrayan authorities. On May 3, USAID suspended food aid to Tigray.
By then, the U.N. World Food Program, one of the main agencies that deliver American aid in Ethiopia, had already paused its operations in Tigray based on similar suspicions. (USAID depends on large aid groups to deliver its supplies).
American investigators quickly widened their focus. They visited refugee camps, markets and 63 flour mills in seven of Ethiopia’s nine regions, where they interviewed commercial traders, officials and aid beneficiaries.
What they discovered was a “coordinated and criminal scheme” that deprived Ethiopia’s “most vulnerable” citizens of lifesaving assistance, the donor group’s briefing document said. It worked differently depending on the region. In some places, officials collected aid from beneficiaries and diverted it to flour mills. In others, beneficiary lists were inflated with false names — or hungry people never received the aid intended for them.
American investigators found evidence that food from other countries had also been stolen, including wheat donated by France, Japan and Ukraine through the World Food Program.
The senior USAID official said investigators were still trying to determine who coordinated the scheme and at what level. But on the ground, it was run by federal and local officials, often in collusion with grain and flour traders.
The United States hopes to resume deliveries “as soon as we can,” the official said.
Michael Crowley contributed reporting from Washington.