The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should benefit from an unprecedented $1-billion in relief aid next year in an attempt to shore up the outcome of elections in the country, the United Nations’s top aid official said on Monday.
”We aren’t taking this quantum leap in any other country. If 2005 was the year of Sudan in many ways, we hope that 2006 will be the year of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” said UN aid chief Jan Egeland.
The assistant secretary general for humanitarian affairs underlined hopes that ”one of the largest and most bloody conflicts of our generation will enter a transition to democracy and rebuilding”.
It is the first time that the amount of funding sought for relief aid in the Central African nation will be ”commensurate … with the real needs in the country”, he added.
The appeal for the DRC was announced last month under the UN’s overall $4,7-billion relief-aid budget for 26 countries.
Sudan is still set to take the largest slice with $1,5-billion.
”We hope the United States, the European Union and others will be able to substantially increase their input next year,” Egeland said.
The DRC, previously Zaire, has not known a free election in more than 40 years and currently has an interim government including former rivals in the last, 1998-2003 war.
Legislative elections and the first round of a presidential election set to take the country from civil war to democracy are scheduled for March 20 next year. A presidential run-off will be held on April 30.
The east of the DRC is still racked by fighting between rival militias and inter-ethnic violence that have caused more than 60 000 deaths, according to humanitarian groups, as well as a struggle for control of the mineral-rich country’s huge resources.
Although relief workers are gaining more access to needy communities, Egeland acknowledged that the human rights situation ”continues to be terrible”. — Sapa-AFP