Aid money caught up between Houthis’ stealing and INGOs’ corruption
Aid money caught up between Houthis’ stealing and INGOs’ corruption الأثنين 24 فبراير 2020 08:53 م الصحوة نت - خاص Alsahwa Net- Chairman of the Studies and Humanitarian Media Center, Mohammed Al-Maqrami, accused the Houthis officials and international non-governmental organizations(INGOs) including United Nations (UN) agencies of mismanagement and corruption of humanitarian aids provided to Yemen.
The Houthis provide lists of ghost-beneficiaries names to the INGOs and sell food aids they receive to the black market, Al-Maqrami said.
The INGOs pay over $375 million every year to the Houthis officials for permits to work in the Houthis-held areas of Yemen, he said.
“INGOs pay [to the Houthis] for two purposes; to obtain work-permit and to share the stolen funds with the Houthis officials,” Al-Maqrami said.
One case that supports such narrative is the corruption deal between an official of the UN World Health Organizations (WHO) and a Houthis-affiliated official, according to Al-Maqrami.
The WHO corruption case was uncovered in late 2019 by an investigative report released by the Associated Press.
Donors feel unsatisfied to performance of the UN agencies in Yemen as these agencies received over $10 billion during the past five years with no improvement of the humanitarian situation in the country, Al-Maqrami said.
He explained that the humanitarian situation in Yemen was supposed to shift from emergency to recovering phase.
“But, the opposite happened, the humanitarian situation worsened from grade 4 to grade 5-famine,” he said.
“This confirms large-scale corruption by the UN officials in Yemen which requires careful watch by civil society organizations (CSOs) to ensure delivery of the aids to the needy people,” he said.
“The UN agencies accepted engagement of the CSOs to monitor their work, but they replaced the food aids with cash-transfer projects and this might reduce stealing of the food aids by the Houthis,” he said.
The UN agencies received a total fund of $3.
6 billion in 2019 with major funds donated by members of the Saudi-led coalition particularly Saudi Arabia that contributed $968 million.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) provided $420 million of the 2019 fund and Kuwait donated $250million.
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