Crisis “all but forgotten,” UN official says

As world attention has focused on Kosovo, the “tragedy that engulfs” the DRC has been all but forgotten, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the DRC, Darioush Bayandor, has warned. In a commentary published in the ‘International Herald Tribune’ newspaper on Tuesday, Bayandor said that UN assessment teams had returned from some areas with “harrowing accounts of famine and epidemics.” Massacres of civilians had been reported in rebel-held areas, while Tutsis in government-controlled zones remained in hiding or protective custody, some “under trying conditions.” With the deterioration of the population’s living and food security conditions, “it is to be feared that a critical threshold is about to be reached,” Bayandor said. Meanwhile, UN agencies in the country remain “chronically underfunded,” with only 60 per cent of the US$ 26 million sought in last December’s UN consolidated humanitarian appeal for the DRC having been funded, he said.