Fighting Corruption in Somalia: Continuing the Momentum, Building on the Technical ‘Fixes’

It is one year since the corruption scandal in Somalia, which reached the UN Secretary General’s office in New York, and resulted in a range of follow-ups under the rubric of Post-Delivery Aid Diversion (“PDAD”). The humanitarian community is recognising just how deeply entrenched the issues are: They are about more than post-distribution aid delivery, but are systemic issues involving all actors, national and international, across the wider aid system and beyond.

The humanitarian community has worked hard over the last year on developing technical improvements that can reduce corruption. Technical reforms have included work on targeting, common registration and referral systems, data sharing, and unified feedback mechanisms. These efforts will take time to yield results. But these technical ‘fixes’, while essential, are only part of the picture. Despite the progress made, significant challenges remain which are rooted in entrenched interests and incentives in Somalia – and within the aid sector more broadly.

There is an enormous opportunity to build on the momentum generated, but this will require moving the focus to other ‘softer’ areas (such as more honest dialogue around the role that aid agencies play in transferring risks and how to better promote trust). Looking only at parts of the picture inevitably means missing the whole story. The current approach has been based on breaking down technical improvements into separate workstreams. These efforts need to now come together into an overall strategic approach. Much of what needs to change lies within the control of humanitarian actors, which they can make themselves as well as through influencing the wider international aid sector.

A tendency of the current approach is to prioritise accountability to donors and institutional headquarters, often at the expense of accountability to Somalis. Likewise, when humanitarian response emphasises key deliverables such as rapid response, large-scale interventions and operational efficiency, agencies often prioritise institutional accountability at the expense of engaging with the trade-offs between these objectives and mitigating corruption risks.

Agencies have often managed to defer difficult decisions and obscure accountability by what is called ‘strategic ambiguity’ – deliberately choosing unclear or vague language whose meaning is flexible enough to satisfy competing demands. This may appear to help in the short-term, but it makes it almost impossible then to implement effective and transparent solutions to the challenges of aid diversion.

A recent report[2] on navigating corruption by the Centre for Humanitarian Change (CHC) for BHA identified the following issues and findings:

• The dynamics of corruption and diversion are embedded within the aid sector. However, there is a reluctance from the international community to acknowledge and take accountability for the role it plays in contributing to the culture and norms surrounding corruption and diversion within both the aid system and Somali society and politics more generally.

• Complex consequences, accountability and incentives. The incentives to prioritize institutional risk over programmatic and contextual risk reflect the personal, professional, and organizational reputations that are at stake, but these incentives are in fact undermining honest discussion about strategic and effective responses to the issue.

• Social norms. There is insufficient attention to addressing the social norms around corruption that exist within aid agencies and Somali society and politics. Strengthening trust, leadership and organisational learning is of critical importance.

• Trade-offs and unintended consequences. Corruption and diversion outcomes reflect the trade-offs built into aid system decisions, driven by upward accountability to donors and international audiences. For example, rapidly scaling up a response often means less focus and fewer resources for inclusion of marginalized groups. Recognizing these trade-offs in advance could enable aid agencies to make transparent, prioritized decisions about resource allocation and mitigating corruption and diversion.

• Strategic ambiguity weakens joint decision-making on the trade-offs in aid and can allow actors to sidestep responsibility for tackling corruption and diversion. A more transparent approach would strengthen accountability and support more effective change.

• Risk transfer versus risk sharing. A focus on institutional risks and upwards accountability has created a system where risks are transferred down the implementation chain. This approach often leaves frontline actors making difficult trade off decisions about corruption and diversion and limits collaborative solutions that could better distribute risk.

A forthcoming ODI report on work being done on reforming targeting mechanisms as a result of the PDAD process identifies some more systemic issues. These include:

• A tendency for agencies to invest their efforts in perfecting the aid targeting processes that they control, such as the design of criteria, even when most exclusion and diversion are due not to the criteria themselves, but to the ways in which they are applied and distorted.

• The need to recognise that a reliance on the use of data alone will serve to bypass political factors and power games from targeting is an illusion. Understanding and engaging with power dynamics is essential.

• Every choice involves trade-offs. For example, the more that community leaders are removed from decision making to avoid the dangers of poor governance, the less they can exercise good governance in helping community members to access the aid they need, or to play a role in ensuring that uncoordinated aid flows into the community do not all target the same few households.

• Every choice involves risks and these need to be assessed, understood and mitigated. For example, if local powerbrokers are cut out of decision making on the distribution of aid and prevented from rent-seeking, how will they respond? There is a danger that they will simply increase their rent seeking after the aid has been distributed. Preparations should be made for this.

Now, just over a year after the PDAD report, the humanitarian community is evaluating next steps and the sustainability of these reforms. Yet, new challenges and opportunities are emerging. One is the likelihood of a climate-related crisis in the near future, such as a severe drought, which could drive further large-scale displacement to urban areas, increase the scope and intensity of humanitarian needs, and heighten the risk of predatory behaviours if resources scale up. The humanitarian community should be prepared to respond in smarter ways that mitigate these risks. A second challenge is the growing demand for the Somalia government to lead and actively participate in humanitarian response efforts, including taking on the complexities of addressing corruption and diversion directly. This is an opportunity to work collectively on an issue that is a governance problem for Somalia and the aid sector.

Agencies will need to find ways to implement changes, including:

• Fostering Collaborative Partnerships: To tackle corruption, we – humanitarian agencies (within government, local and international levels), donors and researchers – must build trust, share risks and responsibilities, and move away from the current approach that relies on risk being transferred down the implementation chain and where genuine collaboration is limited. Leadership and integrity at all levels are required.

• Being Prepared – the Battle is Never Won: Corruption is never fixed once and for all. Technical reforms will quickly become out-dated and be exploited; anti-corruption measures must therefore be flexible and constantly reshaped.

• Preparing for the Next Crisis: Anti-corruption reforms must look ahead to the next crisis and reforms need to be shock-responsive. Those instigating reforms must be sensitive to the role aid plays in contributing to displacement to urban areas and the predatory behaviour that any surge of humanitarian resources generates in times of crisis.

• Thinking about Systems and Simple Solutions – Beyond Individual Organisations: Effective anti-corruption efforts need simple, collaborative action across organisations, prioritising a systems approach over operating in silos. Building local leadership and partner capacity is essential for creating reforms that are resilient, adaptable, and relevant to Somalia’s evolving context.

Momentum has been generated over the last year, with the humanitarian system in Somalia learning and adapting. However, it is clear that this process has only just begun and will take considerable further effort, including using a more strategic and systemic approach. CHC and partners, through Golaha (Platform for Humanitarian Dialogue), aim to be part of these efforts.[3]

While critical conversations are underway, there is a need for a space where participants can speak openly, without ambiguity and without agency labels. Through Golaha (Platform for Humanitarian Dialogue), and by engaging with a wider network of interested actors, CHC is facilitating discussions that tackle the challenges and trade-offs in humanitarian reform, especially around corruption and diversion.

Endnotes

[1] Golaha is a Somali expression that refers to a platform, a council or a sitting on a particular issue.

[2] CHC, 2024. Strategic Ambiguity and Aid: Navigating Corruption and Trade-offs in Somalia, Commissioned by USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA Somalia)

[3] The Somalia Dialogue is supported by Acted and BHA and works closely with other researchers and agencies.

About the authors

Peter Hailey, a nutritionist with 30+ years in humanitarian aid, is a director of the Centre for Humanitarian Change (CHC), where he applies systems thinking to drive actionable, impactful change across the Horn of Africa. CHC supports organisations in using adaptive learning to translate field insights into more effective and equitable programmes for fragile regions in East Africa and beyond. He also serves on the Famine Review Committee.

Nisar Majid leads the PeaceRep Somalia research team with the Conflict & Civicness Research Group at LSE. He has worked in and on Somalia and the Somali territories of the Horn of Africa for twenty years, in various applied research capacities, including for his PhD research which focused on transnational and diaspora aspects of the Somali.

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