Humanitarian partners call for 748 mln USD to assist DRC in 2017

An appeal of 748 million U.S. dollars was launched Friday to assist 6.7 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2017, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said.

"This represents the first year of a new three-year action plan in the DRC, where civilians are affected by one of the world's most acute and protracted humanitarian crises," Haq told a regular briefing at the UN headquarters.

The appeal, which was launched in DRC's capital city of Kinshasa by the humanitarian community and the Congolese authorities, targets over 2.1 million internally displaced people, 500,000 children less than five years old suffering from acute malnutrition, and hundreds of thousands threatened by diseases and epidemics.

With worsening levels of conflict over the past year, humanitarian actors project that the needs are likely to increase even further in the coming months, Haq noted.

According to the UN, insecurity has forced on average 2,000 people per day into displacement in 2016, increasing the number of displaced people from 1.6 million to more than 2.1 million. Moreover, measles and cholera have also become major recurring health issues. Enditem