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US to provide $414 million in relief supplies to Congo

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In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where over 25 million people—nearly a quarter of the country’s population need humanitarian assistance— the United States has announced on Wednesday that it would send nearly $414 million.

The American ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, Jeffrey Prescott, was quoted in a Reuters report that a sizable portion of the funding would go to UN agencies and aid groups that provide urgent food assistance, healthcare and nutrition support, shelter, water, sanitation, and hygiene.

“This funding also includes direct support (of) agricultural commodities from American farmers,” said Prescott, who will formally announce the aid in Kinshasa on Wednesday with U.S. Ambassador to the DRC Lucy Tamlyn.

Prescott stated that the entire amount of U.S. financing for DRC since October is now $838 million. As a result of intensified combat in the east of the country, the Congolese army has been fighting M23 insurgents since 2022.

This has forced over 1.7 million people from their homes, bringing the overall number of Congolese displaced by numerous conflicts to a record 7.2 million, according to U.N. estimates.

Prescott hopes that US funding will inspire other nations to “step up as well” and help the DRC. The US will also donate 50,000 mpox vaccines and $10 million for health assistance.

 

The World Health Organization warned last month that over a million children in Congo are at risk of acute malnutrition. Only one-third of the $2.6 billion requested in U.N. aid for DRC this year has been funded.

The virus known as Mpox, which is contracted through intimate contact, is normally harmless but can occasionally be fatal. It results in pus-filled sores on the body with flu-like symptoms.

Since the beginning of 2023, the current Mpox outbreak in Congo has resulted in around 27,000 illnesses and more than 1,100 deaths, the majority of which were children.

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Musings From Abroad

UN Security Council deliberates stance on Sudan war

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The UN Security Council is discussing a British-drafted resolution calling on Sudan’s warring parties to stop hostilities and permit safe, quick, and unimpeded assistance supplies across borders and front lines.

 

The world’s largest relocation crisis began in April 2023 when the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces engaged in a power battle ahead of a planned transfer to civilian administration.

 

Waves of ethnically motivated violence have resulted, with the RSF mostly to blame. The RSF has blamed the action on rogue actors and denies causing harm to civilians in Sudan. Two RSF generals were named last week by a Security Council committee in the first U.N. sanctions levied during the ongoing conflict.

 

 

“Nineteen months into the war, both sides are committing egregious human rights violations, including the widespread rape of women and girls,” Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Barbara Woodward, told reporters at the start of this month as Britain assumed the Security Council’s presidency for November.

 

 

“More than half the Sudanese population are experiencing severe food insecurity,” she said. “Despite this, the SAF and the RSF remain focussed on fighting each other and not the famine and suffering facing their country.”

 

 

According to diplomats, Britain wants to vote on the draft resolution as soon as possible. A resolution must receive nine votes or more to pass and not be vetoed by the United States, France, Britain, Russia, or China.

 

 

Nearly 25 million people, or half of Sudan’s population, require aid, according to the U.N., since 11 million people have abandoned their homes and famine has spread to displacement camps. Of those, around 3 million have departed for other nations.

 

In its draft language, Britain “demands that the warring parties immediately cease hostilities” and “demands that the Rapid Support Forces immediately halt its offensives” throughout Sudan.

 

 

It also “calls on the parties to the conflict to allow and facilitate the full, safe, rapid, and unhindered crossline and cross-border humanitarian access into and throughout Sudan.”

 

Additionally, the draft urges that assistance deliveries continue to be made through the Adre border crossing with Chad “and stresses the need to sustain humanitarian access through all border crossings, while humanitarian needs persist, and without impediments.”

 

Sudanese authorities have permitted the U.N. and relief organisations to enter Darfur through the Adre border crossing for three months, ending in mid-November.

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Musings From Abroad

South Africa worry Trump’s victory might affect climate fight

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South Africa’s environment minister has expressed concern about the potential effects of Donald Trump’s victory on climate change negotiations.

The demise of Germany’s coalition government this week and Trump’s election coincide with COP29 negotiations to address global warming, which experts credit for this year’s devastating hurricanes, floods, and heatwaves.

“We are concerned about America because we don’t know what they’re going to do … how (it) is going to approach COP,” South African Environment Minister Dion George told Reuters.

“Mr. Trump said that he would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, but we don’t know what will happen,” George added in a telephone interview on Friday.

International partners are concerned that the prospect of an administration led by Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, will de-motivate poor and middle-income countries who want rich nations to shoulder more of its financial burden.

South Africa, which is one of the world’s top 15 greenhouse gas emitters and accounts for 30% of the continent’s emissions, has accepted $11.6 billion from rich nations, mainly in loans, for a switch from coal to renewable energy.

This is seen as a potential model for other ‘Global South’ countries who say financing pledges of $100 billion, which took years to come through, are insufficient.

“It’s certainly not enough. We need another target,” George said. “But then the question is: as the voter base is shifting in developed economies, are they actually going to pay it?”

The South African minister said he had been reassured by German officials that Europe’s stance at the COP29 climate talks will not be hurt by Berlin’s political crisis.

George said that Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s state secretary for international climate action, had contacted him to say it will be up to the European Union to maintain leadership.

“Their position is not changed and that is how they will approach COP,” George said, adding: “They’re on Team Europe. The European Union and German have clearly set out their objectives.”

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