The World Food Program (WFP) has halved rations for 500,000 people in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) because of a shortage of funds.
The DRC is the site of one of the world’s most underfunded humanitarian emergencies, receiving less than half of the $812 million needed in 2017.
The WFP’s Claude Jibidar told Devex that donor fatigue was compounded by the country’s tenuous links to the big donors’ foreign policy priorities – curbing migration and stopping terrorism.
“Donor fatigue, geopolitical disinterest, and competing crises have pushed D.R.Congo far down the list of priorities for the international community,” said the Norwegian Refugee Council’s country director in the DRC, Ulrika Blom. “This deadly trend is at the expense of millions of Congolese. If we fail to step up now, mass hunger will spread and people will die.”
More people fled their homes in the DRC in the first half of 2017 than anywhere else in the world, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. More than 1.7 million people were displaced by fighting in Congo this year. Conflicts have forced 4 million people from their homes and left 3.2 million short of food.
“It’s a mega-crisis. The scale of people fleeing violence is off the charts, outpacing Syria, Yemen, and Iraq,” said Blom.
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