A recent scan­dal where food aid was stolen from World Vision has brought more atten­tion to cor­rup­tion within aid groups. Two World Vision work­ers in Liberia robbed World Vision of food and con­struc­tion sup­plies then sold them for a profit. Since find­ing out about the theft, World Vision has installed more dou­ble checks to ensure the aid gets to the people.

Still the ques­tion remains why there is so much graft with aid agency’s, and why it’s so hard to catch. In his arti­cle for Reuters Alert Net, writer George Fominyen looks into why aid seems to fall into cor­rupt hands.

Dis­hon­est staff are not the only prob­lem. Some anti-graft watch­ers also blame cor­rup­tion on a lack or resources for exter­nal monitoring.

“Often, in an effort to cut over­head costs, on-site exter­nal mon­i­tor­ing is de-prioritised. Reg­u­lar audits only pick up areas where pro­ce­dures have not been fol­lowed, not where pro­ce­dures have been manip­u­lated to cover up fraud,” says Jes­sica Shultz, pro­gramme coor­di­na­tor at the Norway-based U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre.

In addi­tion, there is a sense of com­pla­cency towards corruption.

“Pay­ing bribes to get goods past a road block, for exam­ple, may seem accept­able at the height of an emer­gency when lives may really be at stake. How­ever, that think­ing is being chal­lenged now even in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions,” Shultz said.

A noto­ri­ous cor­rup­tion case sur­faced in 2002 when a study brought to light alle­ga­tions of wide­spread sex­ual exploita­tion of refugee chil­dren in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone by aid work­ers and peace­keep­ers from 40 agen­cies in exchange for relief supplies.

Food dis­tri­b­u­tion, a cor­ner­stone of human­i­tar­ian assis­tance, is par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble because the com­plex logis­tics of aid deliv­ery make cor­rup­tion hard to detect.

More­over, food is a valu­able com­mod­ity and there are many oppor­tu­ni­ties for cor­rup­tion in the process of ship­ping, stor­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing food aid.

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