My recent post on the discontinuation of Somali remittances, and the very devastating effects this change is likely to have on Somalia and East Africa as a whole, drew a strong response from the greater Seattle community. Via e-mail, Twitter, and SLOG comments, people were asking what they could do to help. As I tried to find out what efforts were already underway, I didn’t find much other than a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, dated February 6, requesting action to resolve the issue. It was signed by a few members of Congress, including our own Rep. Adam Smith of the 9th District, the most diverse district in the state and home to the majority of the third largest Somali community in the country (PDF). The letter highlighted the urgency of the issue, requesting a meeting “within the next two weeks to discuss the development of an emergency plan to address the acute shortage of lifesaving money transmission services to Somalia.”
I must admit to being surprised that a decision of such magnitude for so many in the Seattle area hadn’t led to more action, or even discussion by more of our community leaders and elected officials. When I spoke with Congressman Smith on February 15, he informed me that this was an issue his office had been working on for a few years with Keith Ellison, the congressman who represents Minnesota's 5th Congressional District, the home to the largest Somali-American community in the country.
“It is a very difficult problem and a very important one,” Congressman Smith explained. And while concerns about possible money laundering to groups like al-Shabab must be addressed, “many families in Somalia are completely dependent on those [remittance] funds.”
The increasingly stringent and complicated federal regulations being placed on banks that process remittances have been pushing banks out of the East African money transfer business for three years now. Not only are the regulations difficult for banks to understand, they are incredibly difficult to meet when Somalia has no formal banking system—instead relying on the Hawala system of transferring money that, while trusted within the Muslim community for centuries, is completely unfamiliar to most western banks.
“Banks don’t even want to try to figure this out,” Congressman Smith says. And the banks shouldn’t have to. This is a disaster that the federal government saw coming over three years ago when they first began tightening regulations. Currently, the response of the federal government has been to put the onus back on the banks. Fed Chair Janet Yellen explained that while the fed writes the regulations, it is up to the banks to review the regulations and decide if they will process money transfers to Somalia, although they will have to answer to the Fed if anything goes wrong with those funds. “Some firms may be reluctant to undertake that risk,” Yellin testified before the Senate last summer.
When banks and federal regulators agree that the rules are confusing, and banks who are told that they are in violation of these regulations are not given explanations as to how they are failing to meet federal demands, the federal government’s insistence that this isn’t at least partially their problem would be laughable, if it weren’t likely to cause a famine in a country that saw as many as 260,000 deaths from the last famine which struck in the years 2011 and 2012.
As disturbing as the lack of federal response may seem, even more shocking is the seeming lack of response from Washington State officials.
While the inability to send this much-needed money to families in Somalia is devastating to our large Somali-American population, as of writing this post I was unable to find any statements from Seattle Mayor Ed Murray about this issue or to get a response to a request for a comment from him and his office. Seattle has one of the biggest Somali communities in the country, and yet the only elected officials who appear to have even commented on this life-threatening issue are Rep. Adam Smith and our former Mayor Mike McGinn (who first alerted me to this issue via Twitter). It is easy to understand why many of our 30,000 Somali community members feel so invisible to the men and women that they elected to represent them.
In spite of lack of government support, the Seattle Somali community is fighting to draw attention to this issue. The hashtag #IFundFoodNotTerror, started by Ifrah Ahmed, to raise awareness about how this is effecting Somali-Americans across the country has received over 2 million views in just a few days. But the Somali-American community cannot do this alone. An Oxfam petition asking that the Department of the Treasury step in to keep the money transfer pipeline open is now making its way through social media. When asked what the greater Seattle community can do to help, Oxfam Senior Advocacy Advisor Jonathan Scanlon advises, “I'd encourage folks to call, write, or meet with others in our state's delegation to get them involved: Senators Cantwell and Murray, and House members in Western Washington such as Jim McDermott, Derek Kilmer, Suzan DelBene, Dave Reichert, Denny Heck, and Rick Larsen. Calls, messages, and notes to the Treasury Department and White House can help too.”
More attention to this issue is needed. Pressure must be kept on the State Department and the Treasury. Ignoring this issue will erode the limited stability that the Somali government has fought so hard to achieve, enable terrorism, and lead to immeasurable pain and suffering to Somalis here and abroad. The members of the Seattle Somali community are your neighbors, friends, coworkers—they are a large part of Seattle and Seattle needs to stand with them.
