Scandal Scandal Scandal… My usual evening is greeted with cooking or eating while I digest Channel 4′s News programme. For me it is the only news broadcast with the exception of perhaps Newsnight that I find both informative and a issue breaker, a true boardsheet for TV. Tonight we were brought the backlash of protesters in Iran as the principal story and while I was going to write a few thoughts about this. I feel compelled as a human to echo the scandal that is the world food programme in Somalia, probably the poorest nation in the world and one that has certainly suffered most in my living memory.

The story played out tonight as part of the in depth piece, surrounded a Somali working for Channel 4 who entered this off limit’s to foreign journalist region, to investigate despite huge commitments of the world to provide food aid, why starvation was so rife. The World Food Programme is/was entrusted to feed the world’s poor, most vulnerable, those that live on the cusp of certain death, where a small bowl of rice would mean more to a recipient than all the oil in the world. But alas, it seems that the World Food Programme is failing, checks are not in place to ensure that camps are real; moral statue of employee is brought under question as food is sold or held to ransom.

While corruption is naturally widespread in impoverished nations (and most developed ones), surely the WFP should ensure that it raises above, or at least admits that there is a problem. Clearly this report shows evidence of systemic failures which ultimately puts starvation at critical levels; surely acceptance of a problem is the first step to a resolution and statements such as describing food for sale as a “minor phenomenon” by Peter Goossens, the WFP’s Somalia Director are not the most encouraging. He goes on to say, “there is no big corruption going on,”… “Relative to the environment, we are doing a very good job. And the donors know it.” Perhaps he should tell it to the staving people dying from starvation waiting on the bags of grain that will never make it, as they were sold at market, by thieves who through corruption were allowed to prosper.

Original source and full report can be found at Channel 4.