So, again, what good is the UN really doing???
UN food agency failed to act as U.S. aid was looted in Ethiopia On a scorching March afternoon last year, an American aid worker was sitting on a stool in the town of Sheraro in the war-scarred Ethiopian region of Tigray, sipping traditional roasted coffee, when a red truck filled with sacks of grain came into view.
The 50-kilo bags were stamped USAID – short for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s largest donor of food assistance. The grain was supposed to help some of the millions of people in Tigray who depend on food donations to survive.
But instead of heading to its intended destination – a camp filled with starving people – the red truck was moving in the wrong direction. The USAID worker, joined by several colleagues, decided to follow it.
USAID officials say they soon learned that thousands of tons of donated grain were being diverted to commercial mills and markets throughout Ethiopia. The chance discovery shocked USAID, which announced the bare outlines of the alleged scheme in May 2023 and said it had launched an investigation. The United Nations World Food Program – a major distributor of food aid and a key USAID partner in feeding the hungry in Ethiopia and globally – said it, too, would investigate.
The aid giants suspended food aid distribution throughout Ethiopia as they examined the matter, disrupting supplies to millions of hungry people for at least five months. They have yet to release findings or name suspects.
Yet humanitarian-aid workers and U.S. officials believe the caper marked one of the biggest thefts and diversions of food aid ever documented. While the total loss may never be known, a Tigrayan official has said that more than 7,000 tons of wheat were stolen – enough grain to feed more than 450,000 people for a month...................
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/famine-aid-ethiopia/
