New kids on the block

Where most expat aid workers fear to tread in Mogadishu, recently arrived Turkish aid workers have been driving in the streets, swimming in the sea and praying in local mosques.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visited Somalia in August, the first head of a non-African state to do so for nearly 20 years. The Turks have since opened an embassy, started work on the international airport, offered Somalis university places in Turkey and made plans to build a new hospital.

"Turkey is an animating force in Somalia ... The people honestly love them," said Mustakim Waid, who worked in Mogadishu for the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) - the second-largest intergovernmental organisation after the United Nations.

From Turkey to Brazil, India to Saudi Arabia, a growing number of non-Western donors are bringing fresh funds, a different mindset and their own experience of managing natural disasters to the global humanitarian aid scene.

Until recently most emerging donors focused their aid on their own regions. Some, like India, China and Brazil, were also major recipients of international humanitarian aid.

But as their economies and political clout have grown, so too has their influence on the humanitarian aid system, which has traditionally been dominated by the mostly Western members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

Over a decade, the volume of humanitarian aid reported by emerging powers has increased by almost twenty-fold - to $622.5m in 2010 from $34.7m in 2000.

Increasingly, they are being courted by UN agencies and some large aid organisations for funding.

"We are in a risky time ... because we are at a point where the capacity of the system -- both response capacity and financial capacity -- isn't quite sufficing to meet current needs," said Robert Smith, who heads the unit that deals with appeals for funding at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"And those needs are probably going to get deeper and broader, so we need to be able to scale up."

Saudi Arabia has been the top non-DAC donor for most of the past decade. However, like many emerging donors, a lot of its humanitarian aid goes unreported for a variety of reasons, ranging from unfamiliarity with international norms to a lack of organisations to track such data.

In 2008, Saudi gave the UN World Food Programme $500m - the largest donation in WFP's history.

The Gulf state has strongly criticised UN agencies' overheads and the way they channel funds to the NGOs that distribute aid on the ground, said Andrea Binder, associate director of Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute.

Unlike most donors, Saudi Arabia usually gives a small first instalment, and will only disburse the rest if the UN agency proves it can process the money within an agreed time.

"It's a different way of holding UN agencies accountable," Binder said.

Article continues on next page…