A report by Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has found that African countries, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burkina Faso, Cameroon, South Sudan, Chad, Mali, Sudan, Nigeria, Burundi and Ethiopia have the most neglected crises in the world.
In the DRC, the most-neglected country on the list for the second year running, around 27 million, which is one-third of its population, went hungry last year. The aid group said, 5.5 million people were internally displaced, with a further one million fleeing abroad.
The NRC, in a report published on June 1, warned that the world is paying too little attention to a slew of mass displacements of people across Africa, risking starvation deaths and prolonging conflicts.
“With the all-absorbing war in Europe’s Ukraine, I fear African suffering will be pushed further into the shadows,” the aid group’s chief Jan Egeland said in a statement.
The aid group said, despite the crises, there were no high-level meetings or donor conferences about the DRC’s hunger crisis or the conflict in the country’s east, with only 44 percent of the $2 billion requested by the UN for humanitarian aid being received. On the other hand, the NRC highlighted that it took just one day this March for a humanitarian appeal for Ukraine to be almost fully funded.
“The war in Ukraine has demonstrated the immense gap between what is possible when the international community rallies behind a crisis, and the daily reality for millions of people suffering in silence within these crises on the African continent that the world has chosen to ignore,” Egeland said.
The NRC’s annual list is based on shortfalls in the international political response, media coverage, and the amount of aid pledged.