The European Union has allocated more than 2.3 million euros in humanitarian aid for people fleeing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) due to the offensive by the armed group M23.
«The new funding will support the cholera response in the displaced people’s settlements and help prevent the outbreak from reaching other areas,» the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) said in a statement.
The specialized EU department has warned about the worsening humanitarian crisis, many of them living in makeshift settlements near the city of Goma, and the outbreak of cholera has set off the alarm bells of the ongoing emergency.
ECHO’s Crisis Management Commissioner, Janez Lenarcic, has stressed that the African conflict has already caused half a million newly displaced people and more than 250,000 refugees, who are living in survival conditions. «The cholera outbreak makes the situation even worse. Our new funding will ensure the provision of safe drinking water and urgent sanitation and hygiene measures to people at risk,» he said.
With this funding, EU humanitarian aid to the DRC has increased to €82 million by 2022, ECHO detailed in the missive.
More than half a million people have become internally displaced because of the fighting in the province of North Kivu, in the east of the country, more than 2,000 kilometers from the capital, Kinshasa.
This province, as well as other regions in the eastern part of the country, such as Ituri and South Kivu provinces, has suffered since October a strong escalation of attacks against civilians by the M23. In total, there are an estimated 1.9 million internally displaced persons in North Kivu and 5.7 million in the whole country.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
