'Not on my watch:' McCain vows Ethiopia food theft won't happen again

The World Food Programme was not as quick to suspend its food aid from Ethiopia amid mass diversion as it should have been, WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain told Devex in an interview. The United Nations agency was forced to stop its assistance in June after it discovered “widespread” food diversion in a country where 20 million people rely on humanitarian assistance, as Ethiopia recovers from a civil war and experiences a historic drought. Aid workers have told the Associated Press, which first reported the food aid theft, that senior Ethiopian government officials were selling goods on the black market and pocketing the profits. The bulk of the aid diversion took place in December and January, McCain said, but WFP didn’t discover it until “much later.” She called it “a disaster all the way around.” Food aid was first paused in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in May when both WFP and the U.S. Agency for International Development received reports of food theft. A government official in the region said an estimated 7,000 tons of wheat and 215,000 liters of food oil were stolen. The suspension was then broadened across the entire country as it became clear the diversion was much more widespread. “Unfortunately we were not as quick to withdraw as we should have been,” said McCain, who took the helm of the agency in April. “This was at huge scale. I can assure you we are doing everything we can now to make sure that this never happens again.” That process includes “revamping” the way both commodities and beneficiaries are tracked and traced. McCain said this means making sure “that we are in charge” of where both goods and cash transfers are sent, which will include using technology to verify beneficiary identities. She said WFP needs to “be absolutely sure, as much as we can in a country like Ethiopia, that it’s going to where it’s supposed to go.” “We owe that to our donors,” McCain said. The delivery changes will be scaled up throughout all of WFP, McCain said. “This is something that we’re going to change completely through the system so that we can make sure it does not happen anywhere else,” she said. There is no evidence that any WFP staff were involved in the aid diversion, McCain said. “The only people that it hurt is the people that are starving,” she said. WFP maintained other programs in the country after the diversion was discovered, ensuring that nutrition assistance, school meals, and programs for farmers and herders could still help vulnerable populations. McCain said WFP had taken a “no regrets” approach to delivering food aid in Ethiopia, following a humanitarian principle that in an emergency setting, decisions can be made with less regard to long-term consequences because the immediate need is so acute. “It failed,” McCain said of that approach. “[The diversion is] something that we will learn from and will never happen again. Not on my watch, it won’t.” She declined to provide a timeline for when the new tracking and tracing system would be rolled out and food distribution could resume in Ethiopia. She said the government “is becoming more transparent” and is “willing to work with us a little more,” but that WFP still needs “assurance.” “What I want to make sure is that we can be completely sure when we make that first run with commodities and with our people that what we are delivering is right where it's supposed to be,” McCain said.