Corruption perceptions and risks in humanitarian assistance: an Afghanistan case study (Overseas Development Institute), 2007
Author: Delesgues, Savage
This report sets out to examine the risks of corruption faced by those delivering and receiving humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. It is drawn from a limited amount of fieldwork and interviews, and so should be seen very much as a preliminary effort to understand the issues and dimensions of the problem. However, the picture it paints is a devastating one, suggesting a clear need for more concerted action on the part of the government, aid agencies and donors to address corruption risks. The report insists on the importance of managing corruption risks in an environment where needs are important and resources very limited.
The report focuses on a particular case study – the delivery of aid to a long established IDP camp in Herat in the period 2001 to 2003. Capacity, resource and security constraints limited the scope of the research to this one case study and more general interviews in Kabul, but the wealth of information generated from this short study demonstrates what is possible, and suggests the clear need for further work.
The intervention by the United States in 2001 and the subsequent fall of the Taliban hugely increased international attention on Afghanistan. This saw a massive increase in the number of organisations and the size of humanitarian assistance projects implemented in the country. Organisations already present in the country, heavily constrained and limited in their past work by the Taliban government, were now able to expand their scope, and many more organisations came to Afghanistan to begin operations. There was also a huge increase in the amount of funding available for humanitarian assistance. Such assistance was desperately needed. Some 80% of Afghanistan’s population lives in rural areas where there is high pressure on arable land, as well as cyclical droughts and continual threats to livelihood assets from chronic political instability.
In 2001, Afghanistan had been suffering the effects of countrywide drought since 1996, and localised natural calamities – earthquakes, floods, landslides, agricultural pests – which continue to place great strains on the population, particularly in the rural areas (TISA, 2004). The unprecedented drought left much of the population very vulnerable to food insecurity (Lautze et al., 2002) and caused large-scale displacement. Many thousands of people were in desperate need of assistance by the time of the intervention and the fall of the Taliban. Humanitarians delivering such assistance still faced extremely challenging and dangerous circumstances. The fact that this report focuses on corruption risks should in no way be seen as an attack on or as undermining the humanitarian imperative. That some assistance may have been corruptly diverted does not mean that it was not needed. This report aims to promote the more effective delivery of much-needed assistance. It is precisely because the needs were so great and resources so limited that any corrupt abuse of assistance was particularly problematic.
Corruption is a difficult and sensitive issue. The research conducted for this report was not investigative. The report does not make any judgments about whether corruption occurred in particular instances, within particular agencies, nor does it seek to gauge the overall extent of corruption. Names and contexts have been removed where appropriate in order to ensure the confidentiality of the people interviewed.
The Humanitarian Policy Group’s work on corruption aims to engage humanitarian aid actors in a process of research and policy development around anti-corruption initiatives, and to develop tools and good practice. Work completed includes papers on managing and mapping the risks of corruption (Willits-King and Harvey, 2005; Ewins et al., 2006). In addition to this study, a similar case study was carried out in Liberia (Savage et al., 2007).
This work is intended to be a constructive contribution to the better management of corruption risks by aid agencies. The aim is therefore to promote:
- Greater understanding amongst aid agencies and their staff about the key risks;
- Sharing of learning and existing tools, systems and policies for minimizing corruption risks and dealing with corruption when it occurs; and
- Thinking about how to improve tools, systems and policies in order to minimize and manage corruption risks.
The remainder of this section outlines how the study was carried out and the methodology used. Section 2 presents the findings of the case study, discussing both the beneficiaries’ experiences of acorruption and the corruption risks encountered by humanitarian workers. Section 3 discusses the context of reconstruction and disaster response in Afghanistan today, and some of the corruption issues involved. Finally, Section 4 presents some conclusions for humanitarian agencies and actors, suggesting some ways in which corruption risks may be reduced and better managed in the future. Attention was given to people’s personal experiences of corruption. Most respondents welcomed this research.
Kevin Savage (ODI) and Lorenzo Delesgues and
GulPachaUlfat (IWA) conducted the interviews.
