What is it about the global humanitarian system that makes it difficult for aid agencies working in Somalia?
As we know, international and U.N. aid agencies aren't responding as effectively as they'd like to the famine in Somalia.
They say they are hobbled by insecurity, and unable to scale up operations because the militants who control large parts of the famine-stricken areas don't trust their intentions.
Another complaint made by many groups is that winning acceptance in the country - with its record of fighting foreign intervention - is made even harder by the politicisation of aid.
By this they largely refer to three things, according to Overseas Development Institute (ODI) researcher Samir Elhawary.
Agencies highlight the way players in Somalia's conflict are doing their best to exploit the crisis - al Shabaab fighters are trying to extract hefty taxes from aid groups, while militias loyal to the government have put up checkpoints, also wanting their cut.
They cite a push to integrate the United Nation's political and humanitarian operations as another way aid is being hijacked by politics. They also say their work is being jeopardised by laws criminalising material support to groups deemed to be terrorist by the United States and others.
"What really strikes me when discussing with humanitarian organisations, is that there's a tendency to pinpoint everything on the external, so it's U.N. integration, it's counter-terrorism laws, it's the actions of the belligerents," Elhawary told an MSF-hosted discussion on relief efforts in Somalia last week.
"But there's very little reflection on the internal ... what is it about the nature of humanitarian assistance that might be impacting access in Somalia?"
HUMANITARIAN CARTEL
Maybe there's something about the way the global humanitarian system is dominated by Western organisations. The six largest NGOs account for approximately 60 percent of all NGO staffing presence worldwide and 40 percent of operational expenditure.
The "cartel's" apparent power and influence is all the more visible when compared to the weak governments it often works alongside.
"You could argue that the humanitarian system is actually a form of competing sovereignty," Elhawary said.
"You have the refugee or the IDP camps that are seen as their territory. You have the beneficiaries that are seen as their citizens. You have projects such as the provision of public services, community participation, gender equality, local ownership all really as their ideologies."
It may be that local aid groups aren't treated like equal partners, despite the rhetoric. "Whilst (the big international NGOs) placed a lot of emphasis on partnerships, on local ownerships, actually you find that the tendency is to actually assimilate partners and coopt local NGOs. So if you talk to local NGOs they often adopt the language of the international agency rather than vice versa," Elhawary said.
Or, the fact that the lion's share of humanitarian spending - over $90 billion in the last decade - is provided by governments pursuing their own agendas, making the term "non-governmental organisation" a bit of a misnomer, Elhawary said.
And what about the fact that all but two of the 29 largest NGOs are from North America or Western Europe, or that the 16 largest donors which account for about 90 percent of humanitarian funding are all Western, apart from Japan?
Not only that, but NGOs don't exactly help themselves by hiding behind fortified aid compounds.
"You can sympathise with people maybe standing on the outside of these compounds and seeing the high walls, the barbed wire, ... seeing it is quite an exclusive system and not one that is based on the principle of humanity and solidarity with people in need," Elhawary said.
So maybe al Shabaab's claims that aid groups have a suspicious agenda, that relief workers are spies, make sense when you examine the nature of the humanitarian system, he said.
At the same time, the growing role Muslim charities and Islamic countries are playing in Somalia's relief efforts raises the question of whether the Western model is the best.
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