GENEVA:The UN World Food Programme warned on Friday it may have to pause food aid to help millions of malnourished people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by February due to a major funding crisis.
“We’re at historically low levels of funding. We’ve probably received about $150 million this year,” said Cynthia Jones, country director of the WFP for the DRC, pointing to a need for $350 million to help people in desperate need in the West African country.
More than 3.2 million people are facing emergency levels of acute food insecurity in the eastern DRC, characterised by large food gaps and high levels of acute malnutrition, according to a report by a global food monitor released on Tuesday.
The area has been rocked by more than a year of fighting. The Rwandan-backed M23 rebels staged a lightning offensive this year in South Kivu province that allowed them to seize more territory than ever before.
Rwanda has denied supporting the rebels. Both M23 and Congolese forces have been accused of carrying out atrocities.
Previously the WFP was reaching about 1 million people per month with food assistance, but has now had to reduce that number to 600,000 people per month amid dwindling funding.
“If we were to continue reaching 600,000 people per month, we would break completely by February, March. That’s the reality. That’s how dire the situation is,” Jones said.
In recent years the WFP had received up to $600 million in funding. In 2024 it received about $380 million.
UN agencies, including the WFP, have been hit by major cuts in US foreign aid as well as other major European donors reducing overseas aid budgets to increase defense spending. (Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin, Editing by Miranda Murray and Alex Richardson)
World Food Programme may have to pause food aid in Congo due to record low funding
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World Food Programme may have to pause food aid in Congo due to record low funding
- More than 3.2 million people are facing emergency levels of acute food insecurity in the eastern DRC
’Several’ deaths in thwarted Benin coup: government
- Among the dead was the wife of the president’s military chief-of-staff, who was himself fatally wounded
- Some coup plotters remained at large late Monday with as many as a dozen arrested
COTONOU: Several people died in Benin during a thwarted coup attempt on the weekend, the west African country’s government announced Monday after an emergency cabinet meeting.
Early Sunday, “violent clashes” erupted between the coup plotters and the Republican Guard at the Cotonou residence of President Patrice Talon, resulting in “casualties on both sides,” according to the government.
Among the dead was the wife of the president’s military chief-of-staff, General Bertin Bada, who was himself fatally wounded in a separate, earlier assault by the putschists.
Some coup plotters remained at large late Monday with as many as a dozen arrested.
“The small group of soldiers who organized the mutiny planned to remove the president of the republic from office, to subjugate the Republic’s institutions and to challenge the established order,” said the government’s secretary general, Edouard Ouin-Ouro, according to cabinet meeting minutes.
“They initially attempted to neutralize or kidnap certain generals and senior army officers,” he added.
The plotters, who staged their mutiny at the Togbin base in the capital according to the government, abducted Sunday night the chief of staff of the National Guard, Faizou Gomina, and also General Abou Issa, army chief of staff.
Both men were eventually released in Tchaourou, a central city located more than 350 km (215 miles) from Cotonou.
The army “surrounded the Togbin base” on Sunday, where “targeted, surgical airstrikes were then carried out, without exposing surrounding neighborhoods” to danger, the government said.
Benin says it received military assistance for the strikes from the Nigerian army and from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which announced the deployment of soldiers from four countries in the region.
Those troops are “currently housed” at the Togbin base, which “has been retaken,” according to Ouin-Ouro.
“This operation was carried out successfully, without loss of life,” and “the last attackers ... fled,” the government stated.
