'Humanitarian needs considerable' in DRC

The deputy head of the United Nations Observer Mission in the DRC, Fidele Sarassoro, has called on the international community for a “big financial effort” to help the country.

Sarassoro was speaking on Thursday on world humanitarian aid day in Goma, the main town of Nord-Kivu province in the east, where several armed groups are active, notably the Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an Agence France-Presse correspondent reported.

“We need a big financial effort to be able to save lives and assuage the distress of millions of Congolese,” Sarassoro said.

“The humanitarian needs remain considerable and whenever they ease off, a new crisis occurs and reminds us that the task remains huge,” he added.

In 2010, to meet needs estimated by the UN system at $827-million, only about $400-million have so far been supplied by donors.

On July 31, the UN estimated that there were more than 1,9-million displaced people and about a million who have returned to their homes, which makes nearly three million vulnerable people concentrated in the unstable provinces of Nord-Kivu and Sud-Kivu and Orientale in the far north-east.

Sarassoro also said that “humanitarian workers were subjected to 105 attacks in 2008, 176 in 2009 and already 131 en 2010”.—Sapa-AFP