UN agencies request $71 million

The international community’s inadequate and “less than generous” response to the “appalling “ humanitarian conditions in the DRC has bred resentment among the local population, the UN Consolidated Appeal for the DRC for the year 2000 stated. “Many feel betrayed by the world’s inattention to their grievances,” it said. The appeal, launched on Tuesday, requests a total of US $71.3 million to provide primarily life-saving and life-sustaining assistance to some six million war-affected people, which represents about 40 percent of the needy population. The appeal noted that towns on both sides of the ceasefire line had been depleted, harvests lost and traditional social safety nets “frayed to the point of rupture” in a “humanitarian drama that continues to be widely ignored by the international community as it grows in size and virulence.”