Congo world's worst humanitarian disaster - UN
Fighting in eastern Congo, where thousands are dying every month, has made the crisis the worst humanitarian situation in the world, overtaking Sudan’s embattled Darfur region, the UN’s humanitarian chief said today.
Killings continue unabated in the east of the African country, despite the official end of hostilities over two years ago, said Jan Egeland, head of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“Measured in human lives lost, I think that Congo is the number one problem in the world today,” Egeland said in Geneva, adding that the number of casualties amounts to ”a tsunami every month, year in and year out, for the last six years.”
About three million Congolese are now in acute need of assistance and as many as 30,000 people are dying every month from conflict-related causes, Egeland said.
“It is beyond belief that we are not taking eastern Congo as more of an intolerable, acute crisis,” he added.
Congo’s five year, six nation war killed nearly four million people, according to aid groups. The war ended in 2002 with the formation of a transitional government that has struggled to extend its authority to the long-ungoverned east, where fighting between the government, former rebels and militias has continued.
The situation in Sudan’s western region of Darfur remains serious, but fewer people are dying from conflict-related causes there than in Congo, Egeland said.
The United Nations now estimates that about 180,000 people have died in Darfur since October 2003 and a further 1.8 million have been displaced. As many as 10,000 people may be dying there every month as a result of violence, disease or malnutrition, Egeland said.
But although there are a “staggering” number of civilian casualties in Darfur, “there are many more preventable deaths in eastern Congo,” Egeland said.
The Darfur conflict began in February 2003, when rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated government to win more political and economic rights for the region’s African tribes.
Sudan’s Arab government is accused of responding to the rebellion by backing militiamen who have carried out rapes and killings against Sudanese of African origin. The government denies backing the militia fighters, known as the Janjaweed.
The United Nations maintains a 16,700-strong peacekeeping force in eastern Congo and 13 humanitarian offices, but the complexity of the crisis is making it difficult to stop the violence, Egeland said.
Up to 20 different armed parties are reported to be vying for power in the region, where fighting frequently crosses national borders into Burundi and Rwanda. Aid workers are doing as much as they can, but they cannot provide a lasting solution to the crisis, Egeland said.
“Humanitarian aid can only put a plaster on an open wound,” he explained. “The wound has to be healed by political pressure and political peacemaking and by security forces coming in place and disarming those many militias.”
