afrol News, 16 March - The situation in the strife-torn eastern Congo Kinshasa (DRC) has surpassed the upheavals in Sudan's Darfur region as "the biggest, most neglected humanitarian emergency in the world today," according to the UN top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland.

Some 3 million Congolese were in acute need of assistance in a complex emergency where many parties were involved, "including, at one point, about 20 different armed actors," Mr Egeland told a press briefing as a two-day meeting of UN regional humanitarian relief officials began today in Geneva.

About 1 million people had died in the region in the past few years and there were many preventable deaths still - some 1,000 per day - despite the efforts of an active humanitarian community, he said, including 13 offices representing the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which he heads.

In addition, sexual abuse in recent years had become probably worse there than anywhere else in the world, Mr Egeland said. Even the UN's own peacekeeping mission in eastern Congo, MONUC, faces massive charges of sexual abuse.

Mr Egeland's motives for handing this dubious distinction from Darfur to eastern Congo became clear during the press conference. Donors were "sitting on the fence" and withholding contributions for Darfur and eastern Congo. More focus was needed on the Congolese crisis, because, when "we need money and we need it now," he said.

Eastern Congo however was not the only humanitarian crisis that suffered from under-funding, however. No funds had come in for operations in the Central African Republic, Chechnya, Côte d'Ivoire, Congo Brazzaville and a regional operation in West Africa, while only 11 percent of funds needed for the Great Lakes region had been received, Mr Egeland said.

On the other hand, the humanitarian operations to assist the tsunami victims in Asia were well-funded and works there had already turned to the reconstruction phase. After the enormous response from people all over the world to help tsunami victims, humanitarian aid for Africa has now almost dried up. Ironically, humanitarian organisations still focus on the tsunami to raise funds in Europe and America.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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