World ignoring Congo crisis, says aid agency

MORE than 1,000 Congolese civilians a day are dying, nearly all from disease and malnutrition, due to a festering conflict that has killed 3.8 million people, an aid agency said yesterday.

Although the Democratic Republic of Congo’s five-year war was declared over last year, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said it was still the “deadliest crisis” in the world, but the international community was doing too little to stop it.

“In a matter of six years, the world lost a population equivalent to the entire country of Ireland or the city of Los Angeles,” said Dr Richard Brennan, one of the authors of a study by the private New York-based refugee relief agency.

“How many innocent Congolese have to perish before the world starts paying attention?”

The mortality study updates a previous widely agreed death toll of three million people from the war, which sucked in six neighbouring countries.

Based on a survey of 19,500 households, it found almost half of those who died were children under five and 98% of people were killed by disease and malnutrition.

Peace deals were signed in 2002 and a transitional government set up last year, charged with leading the vast central African nation to elections in 2005, but huge tracts of the east remain unstable. Last month, tiny neighbour Rwanda threatened to attack rebels in Congo, fuelling fears of a return to full-scale war.

Highlighting the discrepancy between the $3.5 billion aid budget for Iraq in 2003 and the $188 million earmarked for Congo in 2004, the IRC labelled the international community’s response to Congo’s crisis “grossly inadequate in proportion to need.”

Improving security, increasing basic medical care and providing clean water would save thousands of lives, Mr Brennan said.