EXCLUSIVE: The United Nations for years handed out tens of millions of dollars to non-government organizations involved in humanitarian work in strife-battered Somalia with “no assurance” that the money was used for the intended purposes,” according to a report by the U.N.’s own internal auditing watchdog.
In fact, they concluded, “there was no effective financial monitoring” of the work.
According to the watchdogs, any subcontractors used by the NGOs to help carry out their work were not listed in U.N. agreements, meaning that the U.N. may lack any legal right to find out whether the money it handed over went for the proper purposes.
And atop all that, the U.N.’s chief humanitarian coordinator, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, lacked any appropriate guidelines for handing out the money in the first place. So instead it handed over more than 80 percent of its project funding in advance of any work done, on a quick-impact emergency basis, a method that the auditors said should be ended “immediately” -- but which apparently is continuing into next year.
Those conclusions vary considerably from what OCHA said at the time about its “accountability” for the money under its care: that it kept meticulous and carefully supervised records on who was doing what and where, with auditing of all projects to guarantee financial probity, and an elaborate system of reporting on “achievements against planned activities and outcomes.”
According to the U.N.’s watchdog Office for Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), however, that was not the way things were actually working with the Common Humanitarian Fund for Somalia, described as “an important country-level finance tool which provides quick, predictable and strategic funding to U.N. agencies, international and local NGOs working in Somalia.”
For at least 2 ½ years, the watchdogs say, the U.N. coordinating agency’s auditing ran far behind schedule on much of the $162 million portion that it managed from the $262 million in the Fund from 2010 through 2013. (Much of the remainder went to other U.N. agencies.)
In addition, financial reporting requirements for recipients of OCHA’s share of the Fund varied widely, field visits to actually see how work was done were relatively rare, and the performance reports of NGOs who were paid to do the job “could not always be verified.”
According to the U.N. auditors, the coordinating agency’s overall performance as the managing agent for the Fund was “unsatisfactory”— the watchdogs’ highest negative rating, which they blandly say means that “critical and/or pervasive important deficiencies exist” so that “reasonable assurance cannot be provided with regard to the achievement of control and/or business objectives under review.”
Translation: problems are big enough that there is no way to tell for sure that the inspected activity is working.
The Common Humanitarian Fund by no means includes all the money that wealthy donor countries, led by the U.S., have sent to Somalia, a country racked for decades by war, terrorism, drought, food supply failures and countless other woes.
In 2013, the year when the U.N. auditors’ examination of the Fund ends, the world gave $714.4 million to Somalia via an OCHA consolidated appeal for various emergencies, with the U.S. aid share amounting to $184.4 million, or nearly 26 percent.
This year, the U.S. has contributed even more to the same consolidated appeal: $207.6 million, or nearly 38 percent of the total donated so far. Overall, Somalia’s consolidated aid appeal for 2014 is calling for $933 million.
What made the Common Humanitarian Fund different, according to its website, is that it is intended “to support aid agencies in response to the most urgent humanitarian needs” under the direct management of OCHA itself.
Continued here http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/11/19 ... did-it-go/
