‘A Black Hole for Humanitarian Aid’: Professor Calls International NGOs in Yemen to Move Away from Food-Based Relief
To operate in Yemen, relief agencies must deal with rebels and armed groups accused of plundering the country’s resources and humanitarian aid.
Originally published in June 2021.
A Yemeni professor wants donor organizations to use cash-based aid instead of food to address the humanitarian catastrophe in the war-torn Arab country. Dr Moosa Elayah, who teaches international development and conflict studies at Radboud University in the Netherlands, believes that the warring factions will not stop looting the foreign aid.
“If they really care about the people, international NGOs must use a mobile payment system for aid recipients,” Elayah told The Guardian. “It is a zero-cost delivery mechanism. Try it.”
With the help of Yemen-based researchers, Elayah interviewed 34 NGO directors and staff members on the ground for his latest study, where “most estimated that only 10% to 20% of the aid reached the intended vulnerable people.” Many respondents, especially those in Houthi-controlled areas, believed that the so-called war economy began when the militia stockpiled humanitarian aid to fund military activities and enrich its loyalists.
“What keeps the majority of Yemenis alive is not the foreign aid, but the Yemeni population abroad that transfers money to their families. This is what actually works right now,” said Elayah, who has been Dutch citizen for nearly two decades. “About 90% of the foreign aid is going to these groups, and they use it to gain more power, expand their legitimacy in local communities and recruit fighters. As taxpayers in Western countries, we must consider that our money is going to the conflicting factions and not to those who need it.”
As reported by The Guardian, armed groups — most notably the Houthi rebels in the north — have diverted aid into areas and cities under their control, including Sanaa, the capital. The official Yemeni government — recognized by the United Nations and backed by the Saudi-led coalition — is based in the south, having formed a coalition with a secessionist group backed by the United Arab Emirates, the Southern Transitional Council (STC)
“They don’t care about the society. They care about their money and getting benefits from the war,” Elayah said. “All these groups in the south and the north got millions and millions of dollars from the war economics.”
The study Humanitarian aid and war economies: The case of Yemen, co-written with researcher Matilda Fenttiman, says that oil revenues and extortion rackets also fund Houthi operations. The militia’s control over ports — including the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah — has turned Yemen into “a black hole for humanitarian aid,” the paper reads.
Rising inflation and a weakened local currency has made humanitarian aid a profitable business for armed groups, who either hand it to loyalists or sell it on the black market. Most Yemenis can access food and medicines but cannot afford market prices. Elana DeLozier, a Yemen expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tweeted earlier this month that food provision “is not as grave an issue as the ability to buy it.”
The conflict started when the rebels seized Sanaa in 2015 and took over national institutions and resources, including cash reserves in the Central Bank of Yemen worth $5.1bn. Elayah and Fenttiman affirm that Houthi forces receive an additional $1.7bn annually through tax revenues from local provinces under its control.
The Houthis and the STC have created local NGOs or captured existing ones to plunder the foreign aid. Other civil society groups have had to cooperate with warlords to survive, Elayah’s research shows.
“From outside, you can see that these NGOs are active,” Elayah said. “But internally, they are part of the conflicting factions.” Elayah went as far as to claim that Western taxpayers are, under the current scheme of international aid, financing Al-Qaeda’s activities in the region.
Foreign relief agencies have to deal with different armed groups that control swathes of Yemen. Rules, permits and visa requirements for aid workers can change when moving across the country. Travelling is dangerous and countryside villages that lack basic services are often isolated from both armed groups and aid organizations.
Elayah is worried that many international NGOs continue to liaise with conflicting factions to deliver aid amid rampant corruption. He affirms that million-dollar relief programs are implemented using a fraction of initial budgets.
“(These) organizations don’t seem to care about the sound implementation of their projects, they just throw tax money from Europe and the First World to local NGOs and the warring factions,” he said.
Furthermore, Elayah is frustrated by the fact that prominent humanitarians earn high salaries in Yemen and other countries ravaged by extreme poverty. He claimed that a Sanaa-based UN director pays $5,000 to a dog-sitter while earning $80,000 a month.
“With that kind of money just for the dog-sitter you could save over a hundred families from starvation,” said Elayah.
The Joe Biden administration restored $50m in funding for USAID in northern Yemen a year after Donald Trump suspended aid operations in Houthi-controlled areas. “The Houthis must abide by these commitments (to limit interference in aid delivery),” a USAID official told the Financial Times in March.
This year, the UN appealed for $3.85bn to fund the Yemen humanitarian response plan. Donor countries pledged $1.7bn, down from $1.9bn last year — a reduction that Secretary General António Guterres called a “death sentence” to Yemenis.
Major donor countries include the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Britain and the US, all of which play important roles to the conflict. The Saudi-led coalition has launched 23,001 airstrikes in Yemen to restore president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in power — resulting in 9,828 civilian deaths since 2015, according to the Yemen Data Project.
Britain resumed arms sales to the coalition last year, while the US suspended support for “offensive operations” in February. The Biden administration has not clarified what kind of defensive equipment and military training it still provides to Saudi.
Fighting continues in Marib, where the Houthis are pushing to snatch the last government stronghold in the north. The city is home to the region’s only oil refinery.
Yahoo News reported earlier this month that Saudi has held secret talks with Iran, the Houthis’ regional patron, to de-escalate the conflict.
The consensus remains that domestic parties currently lack incentives to negotiate. The Houthis are looking to expand control, whereas the STC-Hadi coalition is unwilling to make deals that may provide rebels with long-term political gains.
“Regional and international political will is not enough to end the war in Yemen. You need the political will of the Houthis and the Hadi government (and potential spoilers too),” DeLozier tweeted on May 5. “They all have to want to end the war… and at the same time.”
While the warring parties battle to consolidate power, the Covid-19 pandemic has deepened a sanitary crisis burdened by severe outbreaks of cholera and other notable diseases. The official government has reported 6,658 coronavirus infections and 1,307 deaths, though wartime conditions and limited testing capacities suggest that the real numbers are likely to be much higher.
Yemen’s vaccination program began last month after 360,000 AstraZeneca doses arrived. The Houthis are reportedly blocking a shipment of vaccines from entering areas they control. The militia has not provided Covid-19 updates since last May, Reuters reported last week.
Still, any policy for mass vaccination will be difficult to implement regardless of who is in charge, due to the precarious state of public health infrastructure in the country. The war has seen 163 attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities since 2015, Yemen’s UN Humanitarian Coordinator said in a statement in October 2020.
