Conflict survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been through hell,’ UN Emergency Relief coordinator Tom Fletcher said on Thursday.

The UN aid chief said the conflict-impacted people of the war-torn country had suffered “decades of trauma”.

Speaking from the Goma region, whose main city was overrun by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in January, Mr Fletcher said the people urgently needed much more international assistance than they were getting.

He said the last few months had been “particularly horrific for so many”, with heavy fighting early this year between the rebel fighters and the regular DRC army.

Mr Fletcher said the lawless fall-out from heavy fighting has been linked to serious human rights abuses, including potential war crimes.

“Most striking today and yesterday has been the stories of sexual violence and sitting with women who tell horrific stories,” he said.

He stressed that the stories “are too horrific for me to tell here and who are trying to find the courage to rebuild their lives”.

“We’re there providing that support to them, trying to help them rebuild, but they have been through hell,” stated Mr Fletcher.

All those newly displaced by the M23 rebel advance are in addition to the five million people already living in displacement camps in eastern DRC.

Currently, more than 20 million people need relief assistance.

“They are desperate for this conflict to end,” Fletcher stressed.

He regretted that investment in the UN’s humanitarian work and its partners’ efforts was at an all-time low. He noted that in DRC, a full 70 per cent of UN aid programmes were historically funded by the United States’ amazing generosity over decades”.

“But today we’re seeing most of that disappearing”, he said, forcing the humanitarian community to make “brutal choices, life-and-death choices” about who receives help.

“For these women – the survivors of sexual violence, for the kids who told me they needed water,” he said. “For the communities that told me they needed shelter, medicine, these cuts are real right now and people are dying because of the cuts.”

Mr Fletcher stressed the UN was “trying to get the airport back open, trying to get roads open, trying to unblock checkpoints that are impeding our aid from getting through”.

In an attempt to narrow the global aid funding gap, Fletcher recently announced a “hyper-prioritised” plan to save 114 million lives in 2025, contingent upon receiving the necessary funding.

“All we’re asking for to do that is one per cent of what the world spent on defence last year,” he stressed.

(NAN)