Those who believe that food aid does more harm than good were probably flabbergasted by the decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Program (WFP) for “its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

Fredrik S. Heffermehl, a Norwegian lawyer and long-time critic of the political and bureaucratic processes behind the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, for instance, stated: “We recognize the great value of the World Food Program, but the 2020 prize is much less ambitious than [Alfred] Nobel’s idea of ‘conferring the greatest benefit to humankind.’”

Mukesh Kapila, a former United Nations representative to the Sudan who blew the whistle on atrocities committed by the Sudanese government in Darfur, and who is now a professor of global health and humanitarian affairs at the University of Manchester, was even more scathing. “It’s a bizarre choice, and it’s a complete waste of the prize, in my opinion,” he told Devex. “I don’t think the World Food Program needs this money, and I really object to awarding prizes to people or organizations who are just doing their paid jobs.”

Apart from the fact that WFP’s raison d’être is to deliver food to vulnerable populations, and its staff are paid generously to deliver food aid, critics who know the food aid business have in the past pointed out that food aid is, in fact, detrimental in the long run because it suppresses local food production, making it harder for poor or conflict-ridden countries to feed themselves. In fact, studies have found that direct cash transfers are a much more efficient and effective method to alleviate hardship and improve the overall welfare of beneficiary communities.

A few years ago, none other than the European Union (EU)’s representative to Somalia, Georges-Marc André (now retired), admitted this to me when I was researching for my book War Crimes, which explores how foreign aid has negatively affected Somalia. He told me that United Nations agencies such as WFP might have actually “slowed down” Somalia’s recovery by focusing exclusively on food aid instead of supporting local farmers and markets. “The EU is against food aid that substitutes local food production,” he said.

His views are also shared by Michael Maren, a former food aid monitor for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Somalia, whose book, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, chronicles how aid became a political tool in Somalia that was manipulated by both the donors and the recipient country. Maren, who lived and worked in Somalia in the 1980s, believes that food aid to Somalia may have actually prolonged the civil war in the country. “I had learned to view development aid with skepticism, a skill I had hoped to put to good use to help ensure that aid projects, at worst, didn’t hurt people. But Somalia added a whole new dimension to my view of the aid business. My experience there made me see that aid could be worse than incompetent and inadvertently destructive. It could be positively evil,” he wrote.

In his book, Maren quotes a former civil servant working for Somalia’s National Refugee Commission during President Siad Barre’s regime who told him that traditionally, Somalis never relied on food aid, even during droughts. There was a credit system; pastoralists would come to urban areas where they would take out loans that they would repay when things returned to normal. Aid essentially destroyed a centuries-old system that built resilience and sustained communities during periods of hardship.