At a private meeting last week in Ethiopia, U.S. aid officials told international partners that this could be the largest-ever diversion of food aid in any country, aid workers said. With USAID giving Ethiopia’s government $1.8 billion in humanitarian assistance since 2022, a delay in providing food aid causes widespread pain. There were also signs that people whom the USAID official described only as “market actors” were forcing hungry families to surrender food aid they received — something that WFP suspects as well. For USAID’s part, the senior agency official cited a range of reasons that U.S. officials missed the extent of the aid theft for so long. Some Republican and Democratic lawmakers said the rare countrywide suspension of aid showed USAID is taking the theft of U.S. aid with appropriate seriousness.

Source: Ethiopian News June 21, 2023 04:20 UTC