More funds needed to ensure peace in DRC, Uganda - Egeland

Jan Egeland, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, expressed optimism on Tuesday that conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda were coming to end, but warned that not enough funds were being made available for the rehabilitation of war-blighted populations.

"I think that both the Congo and northern Uganda may see, in the next months, a dramatic return to normalcy and opportunity for the international community to help peace and stability," Egeland told a news conference in Nairobi at the end of an eight-day trip to the DRC, northern Uganda and southern Sudan.

Egeland said new appeals for international assistance would focus more on recovery rather than emergency relief.

"In all our [UN] appeals for Congo, Uganda, southern Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda, we are emphasising recovery, refugee return, return of the displaced, and livelihoods recovery," he added.

However, he warned that obtaining funding for recovery could be difficult. "I am nervous that we may not get the money to do this job after we have had generous donor response to much of the emergency relief effort. People are underfunded in terms of receiving the internally displaced, receiving refugees.

We are even seeing shortfalls for some basic humanitarian actions. In the Congo we do not even have money for food at the end of the year," Egeland said.

He said about US $7 million was required in the DRC every month in 2007 for humanitarian assistance.

During a meeting with authorities in eastern DRC, Egeland said he had emphasised the need to stop widespread sexual abuse of women in the war-affected east. "There has to be an end to impunity," he said, lamenting that in the DRC alone, four million lives had been lost during the past eight years because of war and neglect.

On northern Uganda, Egeland said the region was no longer the worst neglected humanitarian emergency because improving security had made it possible for aid workers to reach those in need.

However, he noted that tens of thousands of people continued to live in "sub-human conditions" in camps for the internally displaced, saying they needed to be helped to return to their villages on a voluntary basis.

Egeland said representatives from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the rebel group that has been holding peace talks with the Ugandan government in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba, had told him they were opposed to the indictment of five of their leaders by the International Criminal Court (ICC); he had assured them the tribunal's warrants of arrest would not stop the peace process.

"What we agreed with the [war] victims is that justice has to be served, and justice has to be served in a way that it is not blocking peace, nor blocking reconciliation and I am confident that will happen," said Egeland.

He said that the indictments had been an "incentive" to the peace process rather than impediment.

During his visit to northern Uganda, Egeland said, he had heard accounts of abuses committed by government troops against civilians and he had emphasised the need for better accountability when he met government officials in Kampala.

[Countdown in Congo]

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