UN says Congo remains World"s Deadliest Catastrophe by Reuters / BBC News 7:48am 15th May, 2006   Kinshasa, May 14, 2006. (Reuters)    The international community is overlooking the world"s worst humanitarian disaster in Democratic Republic of Congo, where 10 million people need life-saving assistance, a U.N. official said on Sunday.    With 1,200 people dying every day in the vast central African state, the United Nations launched an appeal three months ago for $682 million (361 million pounds) to provide water, food, medical assistance, shelter and protection to those at risk.    That equates to just $0.18 per person each day.    So far, donors have provided just 13 percent of that, the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.    "While international attention is currently focussed on other crises, the DRC remains the world"s deadliest humanitarian catastrophe," Ross Mountain, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Congo, said in the release.    On Saturday, international charity Oxfam criticised rich countries for not giving enough money to combat Congo"s crisis.    Oxfam singled out European nations Italy, France and Germany as providing next to nothing and said even the United States and Japan had given relatively little.    The United Nations has declared 2006 the year of Democratic Republic of Congo to recognise the best prospects for peace and recovery since the mineral-rich giant gained independence from Belgium in 1960.    Congo, known as Zaire during the three-decade rule of late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, is due to hold its first national elections in more than 40 years on July 30.    Its last war officially ended in 2003: a five-year conflict which sucked in six African nations and killed nearly 4 million people, largely through hunger and disease.    Some 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers are deployed across Congo, but insecurity plagues the mineral-rich east where bands of gunmen terrorise civilians: raping, pillaging and killing.    13 May 2006    Oxfam criticises DR Congo donors. (BBC News)    The aid agency Oxfam has criticised donor countries for failing to tackle the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.    Oxfam says donor countries have contributed only $94m (£50m) to a $682m special appeal launched in February.    It says more than 100,000 people have died in the three-month period from diseases that might have been cured.    Countries singled out for criticism by the agency include the US, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and the UK.    Oxfam says DR Congo is a forgotten disaster zone in which 3.9m people have died over the past eight years.    The Humanitarian Action Plan was launched by the United Nations, the Red Cross and aid agencies in February. It comes as the country approaches UN-backed elections in July, which will be the first democratic polls the DRC has ever held.    The BBC"s World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle says it is unusual for aid agencies to name - and try to shame - specific countries. But Oxfam has called the contributions of the United States and Japan "minuscule" compared with the size of their economies and said that Germany and France had committed little and Italy nothing.    The aid agency calculates what it calls "fair shares" by comparing the amount appealed for with the size of economies.    According to Oxfam, Britain gave only about half of the share it could have been expected to contribute. But a spokesman for the Department for International Development told the BBC that the UK had pledged £60m in additional aid to the DR Congo over the next two years to help with the humanitarian situation in the country.    He said the money would go to providing emergency food and shelter, medical equipment , clean water and to rebuild schools destroyed by the conflict.    Oxfam"s representative in Congo, Juliette Prodhan, said it was good that donors had agreed to help finance the forthcoming polls, but that the country"s problems would not be cured by voting alone.    "Rich country governments have a moral obligation to act when 1,200 people are dying every day from conflict-related causes," she said. "The stark reality is that humanitarian needs in the DRC are receiving one sixtieth of what was contributed to alleviate suffering after the 2004 tsunami."    After years of war and misrule, there is little infrastructure in DR Congo, which is about the size of Western Europe, and there are no road or rail links from one side of the country to the other.    Fighting - particularly in the east - continues between rival militias and government forces. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes.    A United Nations peacekeeping force of nearly 17,000 troops - the world"s largest - operates in the country and is being augmented by a 1,500-strong European Union rapid reaction force over the election period.
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