Rich countries are not giving enough money to help fight a humanitarian crisis in Congo, where more than 1,000 people die daily from violence, hunger and disease, an international charity said today.
Oxfam International said donors had committed only $94 million of the $682 million needed for a Humanitarian Action Plan for Democratic Republic of Congo launched by the United Nations, the Red Cross and aid agencies in February.
But donors had invested more than $459 million in support of presidential and parliamentary elections set for July 30th. The first multi-party polls in the Congo in 40 years are aimed at drawing a line under years of dictatorship, war and chaos.
Oxfam's Democratic Republic of Congo country manager, Juliette Prodhan, said while the international community was right to back the polls "voting alone won't cure the problems".
Rich country governments have a moral obligation to act when 1,200 people are dying every day from conflict-related causes, Ms Prodhan said in an Oxfam statement sent to Reuters.
"To their shame Italy, Germany and France have committed nothing or almost nothing to the appeal, whilst the contributions of countries like the US and Japan remain miniscule compared with the size of their economies," she added.
Oxfam said even the response of consistently faithful donors like Finland, Sweden and Canada had been disappointing.
A five-year war in Congo, which sucked in neighbouring countries, officially ended in 2003 with a deal enforced by UN peacekeepers, but fighting by rebels and renegade militias has raged on in the violence-prone east.
"Democratic Republic of Congo remains one of the world's forgotten disaster zones with an estimated 3.9 million people that have died as a result of the conflict in the past 8 years," Oxfam said.
It added that whereas a UN appeal for the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami had raised $550 for every person in need, the humanitarian action plan for the Congo had raised just $9.40 per person for the next year.