“One of world’s worst humanitarian crisis”

The situation facing DRC was on Tuesday characterised as “one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis” in terms of both intensity and magnitude. In a briefing to the UN Security Council, the acting UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Carolyn McAskie, spoke of the critical humanitarian situation in the country where civilians continue to flee fighting amid a collapsing economy and poor access for relief workers. “As the humanitarian situation becomes increasingly more grave for growing numbers of Congolese, the efforts of the UN and its implementing partners are being hampered by the lack of security, limited access to these affected populations, and critically few resources for life-saving interventions,” she said. Underscoring the fact that humanitarian agencies must be able to reach to those in distress, she urged Council members to “impress upon all parties to the conflict the need for cooperation to ensure full access to all areas of the DRC”.

McAskie said that some 16 million people - or one third of the country’s population - were affected by the conflict. She cited a study by the International Rescue Committee, an NGO, which found that up to 1.7 million people, including some 600,000 children, had died as a result of the war in eastern DRC alone. “About one third of those deaths are actually attributable to violence; the rest are due mainly to preventable diseases and malnutrition caused by the lack of access, the lack of assistance, and the sheer inability of people to live a normal life,” she said. “The people of Congo are becoming exhausted, no longer able to cope with the violence and impoverishment to which they are subjected to on a daily basis.” She therefore stressed the importance of support for the UN’s consolidated appeal for the DRC, which aims to provide the country with immediate life-saving support and to implement longer-term assistance programmes.