The outside world generally seems to assume that when a United Nations agency takes on a humanitarian project, it has the infinite resources of the international community behind it. This is very far from being the case. Some of the most critically important work that the UN does relies on extra funding which has to be raised from individual states. Thus it will have come as a shock that the World Food Program (WFP) is halting a food aid scheme for Syrian refugees because it has simply run out of money. This means that as winter sets in, 1.6 million refugees spread over Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey face a grim time of it.
WFP officials have said that the program has not received all the cash it had been promised by governments. They have, however, been nervous of naming and shaming donor countries that have welched on their promises.
It ought to be a matter of pride that no one could ever imagine that the Kingdom is one of the defaulters. Ever since it became clear that the Assad regime was intent on crushing the lifeblood out of its own people, so it could cling on to power in the ruins that it was creating, Saudi Arabia has been a fountain of funding. It has channelled this both via UN programs and its own projects to ease the plights of the millions of refugees. And the money has not simply come from the government. Millions of people living in the country, both Saudis and expatriates, have reached deep into their pocketbooks to support appeals to feed and shelter Syrian refugees.
It is, therefore, a shock to learn that the WFP has run out of cash. For the great majority of the Syrian refugees that its voucher program has been supporting, there is suddenly no clear idea where the next meal is coming from. This is an absolutely outrageous state of affairs.
Yet it has to be said that the WFP and the wider UN must take some of the blame for this disastrous development. They have known for some time that the cash was running out. They have also been fully aware of the countries that had promised aid and still failed to deliver. Yet they allowed the financial crisis to build to such an extent, virtually unremarked by the international media, that the first realization that there was a major problem was when the voucher program was actually stopped.
Now it is not generally the UN's way to threaten members with exposure for failing to honor their promises. A global organization whose very essence is based upon consensus cannot be seen to be strong-arming members, however urgent and important the matter may be. Even a leak to the press of the names of the countries involved would be considered deeply inappropriate. Yet it seems quite clear that every government that has committed to help Syria's hapless refugees, should like the Kingdom, like the Americans and the British, step up to the plate and write the check.
And what makes this failure ever more puzzling is the amount of money that is being sought. The WFP says that the voucher program it has suspended, needed $64 million for the month of December, a relatively insignificant sum even for a multinational corporation, let alone a government.
