Somalia's Aid Is 65 Percent Missing and the World Is Walking Away

Thirty years. That is how long the United Nations has sent political missions to Somalia, a country that collapsed in 1991 and has been fighting for its own survival ever since. On 31 October, the last of those missions, UNTMIS, closed its doors. The diplomats issued their statements about "persistence, partnership and adaptation." Somali families, meanwhile, are still waiting for the help they were promised.

We need to be honest about the numbers. This year, 4.8 million Somalis, out of a population of just under 20 million, need humanitarian assistance. Aid agencies asked for $852 million to reach 2.4 million people, which is only half of those in need. By mid-October, only about 35 percent of that money had arrived. So the world has underfunded a plan that already reaches just half the people who are suffering, and then it announced a victory lap. Who is accountable for the other two-thirds of that gap? Ask the mothers in the displacement camps who are being uprooted for a second or third time by floods and fresh violence.

Consider what that gap means in practice. Families who fled drought in one district are chased off by floodwater in the next, then pushed out again by fighting. Each displacement strips them of a little more: a goat, a water pump, a child's school place, the last of their dignity. The UN's humanitarian office, OCHA, calls Somalia one of the most complex crises on earth. That phrase is accurate, but it is also a convenient way to avoid saying what it really means. It means a country where the climate and the conflict feed each other, and where the international community has learned to manage the damage rather than end it.

The development picture is just as stark. OCHA reports that Somalia imports more than 90 percent of its essential goods. A country that cannot feed, fuel, or clothe itself without foreign supply chains is a country that cannot make its own choices. Its economy leans on subsistence farming, livestock, pastoralism, and remittances from relatives abroad, which means its future depends on diaspora money and on the goodwill of donors who are quietly losing patience. In Puntland alone, nearly one million children are out of school. A nation that cannot educate its children cannot build its own institutions, and a nation that cannot build institutions will keep outsourcing its sovereignty to whoever is paying.

There are, to be fair, real gains that deserve recognition. The UN's migration agency, IOM, rebuilt a run-down vegetable market in Balcad, giving 56 sturdy stalls, running water, and solar lighting, with about 70 percent going to women-headed households and women-led businesses. The health ministry, working with UNICEF, launched national guidelines on caring for small and sick newborns. The FAO is backing a school meals programme in Puntland that links 1,330 local farmers and fisherfolk to schools serving 18,700 children, so that children eat and families earn. In Baidoa, UNMAS trained hundreds of students and teachers to spot explosive hazards. These are small, practical, dignified interventions, and they show what works when local people are at the center.

But small projects cannot substitute for a state. The real question is whether Somalia's federal and regional leaders can govern, collect revenue, enforce contracts, and protect citizens without a UN political mission holding their hand. The UN itself says Somalia now has national and federal institutions that did not exist in the early 1990s. That is true. It is also incomplete. Institutions that exist on paper are not the same as institutions that deliver. Somalia's leaders have spent years arguing over power-sharing, electoral rules, and constitutional questions while the people they are meant to serve go hungry. A country cannot be rebuilt by committees alone. It must be governed by leaders who are accountable to their own citizens.

And then there is Al-Shabaab. The UN Secretary-General wants continued support to counter the terror group and to help Somalia move toward a gradual, sustainable security transition. We agree that the terror group must be defeated, but defeating it requires more than foreign troops and donor cheques. It requires a Somali state that can hold territory, pay its soldiers, and earn the trust of communities that have seen both insurgents and government forces abuse them. Every district that Al-Shabaab controls is a district where taxes are extorted, schools are shut, and young men are recruited at gunpoint. Security and governance are the same fight.

So what must happen next? Somalia's leaders must publish a transparent budget, widen their domestic revenue base through honest customs collection, and stop treating public money as a prize for clan allies. They must strengthen an independent judiciary so that contracts are enforced and land disputes are settled by law rather than by militia. They must protect the free movement of goods and the property rights of small traders, the women in Balcad and the fishermen in Puntland, who are the real engine of the economy. Botswana built one of Africa's most stable economies on a simple formula: clean governance, respect for property, and fiscal discipline. Mauritius did it through open trade and strong institutions. Senegal showed that peaceful transfers of power are possible even in difficult times. Somalia does not need to invent a new model. It needs to adopt the ones that have already worked.

The international community has responsibilities too. Donors who pledged $852 million must fund it, and they must stop treating humanitarian appeals as optional. The African Union, through its mission in Somalia, must coordinate security transition with clear benchmarks rather than open-ended deployments. The UN Security Council must demand that Somali institutions carry real weight in decision-making, not just in photo opportunities. And African civil society, from Mogadishu to Nairobi to Kampala, must hold our own governments to account when they sign agreements and then ignore them.

Here is the call to action. Somali citizens should demand audited public spending, open procurement, and an end to the practice of patronage that turns government offices into family businesses. Diaspora Somalis, who send billions home each year, should insist that their remittances are backed by transparent institutions and not siphoned away. Donors should publish which pledges have been delivered and which have not, and they should face consequences when they fail. And every African who believes in self-determination should refuse to accept the lie that Somalia is too broken to be fixed. It is not too broken. It is under-governed, under-funded, and under siege. Those are problems with solutions, and the time to act is now, before another generation learns that the world will mourn a country but never really save it.

Based on reporting by UN-NEWS