'Drastic' aid cuts in DR Congo deepening crisis — UN

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KINSHASA - A "drastic reduction" in humanitarian funding risks blocking aid to more than four million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the United Nations warned on Wednesday.

The UN's humanitarian agency OCHA launched an "urgent appeal" for $1.4 billion to support its 2026 operations in the DRC, where the world's "longest-running and most neglected" humanitarian crisis is taking place.

OCHA will in 2026 focus on assisting 7.3 million people compared with 11 million the agency prioritised in 2025, it said in a statement.

The "narrower targeting" is due to "insufficient funding", it said.

"This drastic reduction comes as the country continues to face an acute crisis driven by persistent armed conflict, large-scale displacement and returns, climatic shocks, and recurrent epidemics," it added.

Last year, around 1.5 million people lost access to primary healthcare due to facility closures, shortages of vital medicines and limited capacity to prevent and respond to epidemics, according to the UN agency.

Over 390,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition were also deprived of essential treatment.

The humanitarian crisis is worst felt in eastern DRC, a region beset by conflict for three decades and where the Rwanda-backed M23 group has seized swathes of land and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Fighting there has "reshaped needs, disrupted supply chains, and increased administrative and security constraints", OCHA said, noting that the situation made accessing populations "more complex than ever".

US President Donald Trump's administration has spearheaded cuts to humanitarian aid on a global scale since early 2025.

The United States previously provided more than 40 percent of international aid.