The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Bruno Lemarquis, said aid suspension by the United States administration is a major source of concern with several UN agencies or international NGOs active on the ground, having seen their operation at best severely impacted, if not halted.
Lemarquis, while addressing the security council from Kinshasa, explained that many among the population of Goma are facing “a difficult humanitarian situation,” as essential services in the city are “not yet fully operational, particularly water and electricity.
He said, “Hospitals in Goma are still overwhelmed; mortuaries are saturated, and medical teams have to cope with an unprecedented number of war wounded with a shortage of medicine and medical supplies. Risk of epidemics are high in the city, in particular cholera and Mpox. And also, food prices have risen, and more and more people need food assistance every day.
Lemarquis said getting aid to Goma is a big challenge they are facing, as the Goma airport, the “main humanitarian lifeline, remains closed and non-operational for a number of reasons.”
He told reporters that the DRC “was the largest recipient of US humanitarian assistance in the world in 2024,” 910 million dollars out of 1.3 billion dollars of aid received “from the US alone, which means 70 percent.”
The humanitarian official said due to the ultra-dependence on US funding which has been halted a lot of programs had to shut down.
He noted that small donors “do their best” to fill in the gap, “but because of the sheer size of the needs, it’s a drop in the bucket,” adding that “it will be hard to compensate a 70 percent dependence on one donor.”
