DR Congo: $ 2.3 billion needed for humanitarian work-UN

Some 2.3 billion dollars will be needed for various humanitarian work in the DRC from now till 2019.

The UN Humanitarian Response Plan (PRH) said it “will target 6.7 million vulnerable people, which is expected to reach 7.1 million by 2018, and 7.2 million by 2019.”

“To implement this PRH, some US $ 2.3 billion will be needed over the next three years,” said the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs in the DRC.

“Most needs are concentrated in areas of conflict in the east of the country, but pockets of vulnerability exist elsewhere in this country struck for several decades by an acute and prolonged crisis,” it adds.

The situation officials addition has been made possible by more than twenty years of armed conflict, fueled by ethnic and land disputes, competition for control of the region’s mineral resources and rivalries between regional powers that has affected sections of the 70 million Congolese people.

The PRH says the problem of population movements account for more than half of humanitarian needs and affects more than 2.1 million internally displaced persons and nearly half a million refugees.

“The humanitarian context is aggravated by pre-electoral political tensions, the economic slowdown and the spread of inter-communal violence.”

The DRC is undergoing its own political turmoil with an expected power change and transition now shifting towards “end of 2017”.

All that said, could play into the bigger picture of aid work.