Somalia is stuck in a \u201chumanitarian trap\u201d, with a generation of \u201cundignifying\u201d emergency relief leading to the \u201cslow death\u201d of the people receiving it.<\/p>\n
Those are not the words of an aid-sceptic politician in a donor country, but those of Abdihakim Ainte, a top official working on climate change in Somalia\u2019s government. Humanitarians have operated in the east African country for decades.<\/p>\n
In a scathing interview with The New Humanitarian, Ainte slammed the \u201cperpetual dependence\u201d caused by humanitarian organisations in Somalia, and the money they spend without coordinating with the government \u2013 which is also fighting a civil conflict with al-Shabab militants.<\/p>\n
Humanitarians in Somalia should change their \u201cintents, approach, philosophy,\u201d said Ainte, who was appointed as director of climate change and food security in the office of Somalia\u2019s prime minister in April. \u201cThere has to be a paradigm shift\u2026 so that we don’t create this perpetual cycle of dependence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ainte called for the billions a year in humanitarian aid spent in the country to be sent instead to government coffers to be used for longer-term development programming. But one Somali analyst warned that Ainte\u2019s calls for a radical humanitarian overhaul in Somalia comes with the risk of \u201cunimaginable suffering\u201d and corruption in a country that has repeatedly endured conflicts, dire food insecurity, and environmental disasters.<\/p>\n
Ainte\u2019s remarks still echo a growing chorus of disaffection with traditional humanitarian approaches among Global South\u00a0governments, communities\u00a0affected\u00a0by crises, and\u00a0aid workers themselves\u00a0\u2013 but senior officials are rarely as frank in their public criticism.<\/p>\n
Decades of humanitarian response<\/strong><\/p>\n Addressing Somalia\u2019s humanitarian crises and focusing on development are among the key priorities of the government of Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, along with security and fighting al-Shabab, according to Ainte. He described himself as a domestic coordinator of policy and the government\u2019s international \u201cinterlocutor on climate and food security\u201d.<\/p>\n Both issues are raw and immediate: After five failed rainy seasons, severe drought helped push nearly half the country,\u00a08.25 million people, into need of humanitarian help in 2023. The\u00a0UN-led response plan\u00a0for Somalia estimated in January that 6.9 million people will need relief this year, with 4.8 million of them requiring nutritional assistance.<\/p>\n But Ainte is taking a much longer-term view of crises in his country. \u201cWe’ve been going through 30-plus years of recurrent humanitarian catastrophes, [which have] ended [livelihoods] but also created a permanent, vicious cycle on our people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n UN-led appeals that called for $100 million in\u00a01996, for example, have regularly topped\u00a0$1 billion\u00a0since 2017.<\/p>\n Aid has become a \u201cslippery slope\u201d that has created a \u201cdependency syndrome on the most vulnerable people\u201d, said Ainte. This is most clearly seen in the estimated\u00a03.9 million\u00a0people who are internally displaced,\u00a0many of them in camps\u00a0\u2013 \u201cthe most indignifying, appalling condition that any human could suffer,\u201d said Ainte.<\/p>\n Another example of aid dependency: Most humanitarian financing bypasses the government, Ainte said, going straight from donors to UN agencies and big NGOs. This deprives government institutions of the chance to develop \u2013 including their ability to deliver humanitarian services. He said the government has no say over how the money is spent, and the aid community actors are only accountable to themselves.<\/p>\n