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Poll: Congo's Hidden 'Mega-crisis' is Most Neglected of 2017

by Reuters

   LONDON --

   With millions of people on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe and
   children facing unspeakable violence, the Democratic Republic of Congo
   was the most neglected crisis in 2017, according to a survey of aid
   agencies.

   Overshadowed by the Syrian war and Rohingya refugee exodus from
   Myanmar, Congo barely made headlines despite horrific violence that has
   erupted in the center of the vast country, they said.

   The Central African Republic, with its "off the charts" vulnerability,
   and Yemen -- ravaged by war and hunger -- ranked behind Congo in the
   Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of 20 leading aid organizations.

   "A massive humanitarian crisis has been unfolding in the Congo almost
   unnoticed," said Mark Smith, World Vision's emergencies chief. "The
   scale and brutality of what is happening to children in hard-to-reach
   places is almost unimaginable."

   An insurrection against the government in the Greater Kasai region has
   displaced more than 1 million people in what the Norwegian Refugee
   Council called a "mega-crisis."

   Food shortages have left millions hungry with hundreds of thousands of
   children at risk of dying.

   Agencies have received accounts of mass killings, rapes and beheadings.
   There have also been reports of horrendous attacks on babies and young
   children.

   Children as young as 10 have been recruited by armed groups, while
   others left orphaned are sleeping alone in forests.

   Kasai's poor roads and telecommunications have made access challenging,
   contributing to its invisibility, agencies said.

   Provinces in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo also remain
   volatile. Across the country, 13.1 million people need assistance,
   nearly a third of whom are displaced.

   World Vision said it believed years of repeated and overlapping
   conflicts in Congo meant it had "fallen off people's radar" -- a view
   echoed by others.

   'Deliberate starvation'

   Congo was named by nearly half those polled, but many said there had
   been such a plethora of crises in 2017 -- with at least four countries
   at risk of famine -- that it was hard to pick the most neglected.

   Oxfam named Central African Republic (CAR) as "the most forgotten of
   forgotten crises" with 2.4 million people needing help "in a country
   that most people don't even know exists."

   CAR has been racked by violence since mainly Muslim rebels ousted the
   president in 2013, provoking a backlash from Christian militias.

   The U.N. refugee agency said 1.1 million people -- nearly a quarter of
   the population -- had fallen through the cracks and warned the
   "calamitous situation" would worsen unless a massive funding shortfall
   was addressed.

   Although Yemen has made headlines this year, agencies said the coverage
   did not begin to reflect the enormity of what was happening.

   "The lack of public awareness ... is truly shocking given the sheer
   scale of suffering and deliberate starvation of much of the
   population," said Jean-Michel Grand, executive director of Action
   Against Hunger UK.

   This week marked 1,000 days since the escalation of a conflict which
   has uprooted more than 2 million people, left 8.4 million close to
   famine and triggered a massive cholera epidemic.

   The warring parties have attacked schools and hospitals and restricted
   aid.

   "The past year has been incredibly harrowing," said Islamic Relief
   Worldwide CEO Naser Haghamed. "Despite an increase in media coverage
   and political intervention, the true scale of the emergency is still
   not dominant in the consciousness of the wider world."

   International Medical Corps said the level of need was "unfathomably
   immense" and the situation almost entirely man-made.

   'Weapon of war'

   Two agencies flagged the displacement crisis in the Lake Chad Basin,
   which was voted the most neglected emergency in last year's poll.

   An eight-year campaign by Boko Haram militants to create an Islamist
   caliphate has affected millions of people.

   With most coverage focused on Nigeria, Plan International singled out
   the impact on its forgotten neighbor Niger where more than 400,000
   people need help.

   It said militants were killing and threatening teachers, forcing
   children to miss school and raising their vulnerability to sexual
   violence, abduction and enslavement.

   "These children deserve the world's attention. The violence which is
   robbing a generation of an education and forcing them to grow up in a
   world of fear has got to stop," said Plan's humanitarian director Roger
   Yates.

   With starvation threatening millions in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia
   and Yemen, one agency picked famine as the year's most neglected
   crisis.

   Mercy Corps' humanitarian chief Michael Bowers said food was
   increasingly being used as a "weapon of war" with little action taken
   by the international community.

   "Global hunger is on the rise for the first time this century," he
   said. "We fear 2018 will look much like 2017 without a massive drive to
   fight back hunger."