DRC humanitarian crisis 'rife'
2006-09-06 09:07
Kinshasa - The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo are still suffering a severe humanitarian crisis, with widespread violence going unpunished, says a top United Nations official.
Jan Egeland, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, was on a five-day visit to the vast central African country, which held its first multi-party elections in more than 40 years in July.
Egeland said: "It's now three years since I was here", noting that substantial "humanitarian progress" had been made in that time, allowing some two million displaced people to return home.
Egeland added: "However, I'm very concerned still. The bad news is that the civilian population is still suffering. There is still impunity for the violence, for the rapes that many women are still enduring, especially in the eastern provinces. There's a lot to be done."
According to the UN, the DRC, formerly known as Zaire, was emerging from a civil and regional war that killed 300 000 people directly between 1998 and 2003, and indirectly caused the deaths of 3.5 million more.
The east of the country in particular was still plagued by violence.
The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs considered the situation in the DRC as one of the most dramatic humanitarian catastrophes in the world.