For the past year, the United States Aid Agency(USAID) has been supplying increasing amounts of food aid the Ethiopia, specifically the Tigray region which lies on the border with Eritrea, which was involved in the 2020 war when Eritrea invaded Ethiopia through the Tigray which housed the troops during the 2 year war(2020-2022). Back to the USAID, for the following months it has been increasingly evident that the food shipments are not being given directly to the people of Tigray, and were being sold for money, abusing the humanitarian aid.
With the increasingly evident abuse of humanitarian aid, the U.S has stopped sending the food to the Tigray region as the aid is not being administered correctly. What this means for the people of the Tigray region is simple. The food is supposed to be given to whoever needs it, specifically for free, and if more aid it wanted they will have to follow the rules of the game and follow the terms supplied by the package deal. With this occurring, there will be conflicts between the U.S and Tigray, as the U.S goes in to ensure the aid is put to good use, and ensure the U.S will not need to babysit the aid to keep it from being sold. For the people of Tigray who need the food, there will be increased tensions internally in Tigray, as Ethiopian and Tigray officials weed out the “bad guys”, and whoever else could be supporting these groups. Although the aid was mostly stolen/hijacked and sold, there are still lingering thoughts in the eyes of the United States as to Ethiopian involvement as tensions still are residing in the people of the area. Prior to the U.S suspending their aid, the WFP(World Food Programme) also halted its aid, showing spread out disapproval of the events occurring in Ethiopia. Overall, this is just another bump in the road for humanitarian aid, which is currently in focus on getting aid to Sudan which puts humanitarian aid organisations at stress as they are being slowed down and/or halted on several different fronts.
Putting the problems created by the event(s) above, humanitarian aid doesn’t come as a free “Were coming in” deal. It is a deal of partial alliance on the humanitarian front in which all sides agree to try their best to provide for a free flow of humanitarian aid into said regions, at least during specific times. With this situation occurring, this is in essence and by definition a collective goods problem, as not all participating parties are putting in the same work, the humanitarian organisations are going to pull out as it is not worth it, especially as most humanitarian organisations are non-profit, and will want to make sure the money spent, is money well spent.