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The EC's humanitarian aid office, ECHO, will donate €74 million (US $79 million) for disaster victims in the Great Lakes region of Africa. This sum is part of €442 million that ECHO has set aside in 2003 for victims of humanitarian disasters in more than 50 countries worldwide.
ECHO reported that the Democratic Republic of Congo would get €35 million, Burundi €15 million and Tanzania €24 million.
In a statement issued in Brussels on 16 January, ECHO, one of the world's main donors of humanitarian assistance, announced that it had adopted its 2003 strategy. "With a budget of €442 million for the year, ECHO will project Europe's solidarity to the victims of humanitarian disasters in more than 50 countries and territories worldwide," it said.
The largest funding allocations will be for humanitarian "hotspots, notably the Great Lakes region of Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Tanzania), Afghanistan, the Northern Caucasus (Chechnya) and the Middle East".
ECHO also said that substantial relief programmes were also envisaged for the Horn of Africa, coastal West Africa (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire), drought-stricken areas in Southern Africa (mainly Zimbabwe and Angola), Iraq, North Korea, Colombia, and the Western Saharan refugees in Algeria.
ECHO's 2003 strategy is on the web at the following address:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/echo/pdf_files/strategy2003_en.pdf 
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