BERLIN, May 18 (UPI) -- The Congo refugee crisis is wiping out a people and must not be ignored, according to the United Nations.
"We have a tsunami in the Congo every six months," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres in Berlin, referring to the 2004 Indian Ocean disaster. He cited 1,200 lives lost daily to conflict-related causes in the Democratic Republic of Congo and added that the emergency was woefully under-funded and appealed for additional international aid.
Over 20 percent of children die before their fifth birthday in the war-ravaged DRC and one in 10 die in the first year of life. Last year's agency appeal received only 14 percent of the needed funding, or $10.6 million out of the $75 million required, Guterres said.
The situation has improved enough for Congo to schedule elections for July 30, the central African country's first democratic vote in 40 years. Denmark and Ireland today announced donations of $1.7 million to help fund the election process.
President Yoweri Museveni of neighboring Uganda has argued that the DRC should be booted from the General Assembly for continuing to harbor warlords and militias.
"You cannot harbor killers and at the same time continue being a member of the United Nations," Museveni, facing his own problems with the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, told visiting diplomats Wednesday in Luweero, Uganda, pointing to continuing strife. "The international community should solve this problem and quickly."
Guterres stressed the need to support the new peace agreement in Sudan's Darfur region and urged the international community to ensure effective implementation.
"Darfur is the epicenter of an earthquake that is threatening the whole region," he said. "If we do not solve the problems in Darfur, the whole region will not find stability."
