The UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has received two new allocations from the UN to support Congolese refugees in Uganda and efforts to combat a deadly cholera outbreak in Angola.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher, in a statement, said the funding was released on Friday.
No fewer than 60,000 people have fled violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for neighbouring Uganda since January.
The first allocation, for $2.5 million, will allow the UN and partners to provide life-saving assistance to over 40,000 refugees, including clean drinking water, food, healthcare and nutrition support.
The $1.8 million CERF contribution in Angola will support the urgent response to the country’s worst cholera outbreak in two decades.
Since the beginning of the year, the outbreak has spread to 17 out of 21 provinces, with more than 18,000 cases and 586 deaths reported as of 7 May.
The funding will go towards scaling up the response and helping to prevent further spread of the disease.
Similarly, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said funding shortfalls had forced the humanitarian community to re-prioritise its response plan to alleviate the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Nearly seven million people have already been forcibly displaced by violence since advances by M23 rebels earlier this year.
While the 2025 UN humanitarian plan aims to provide life-saving interventions to 11 million people across the DRC at a cost of $2.5 billion, only $233 million has been received so far.
In spite escalating needs in the wake of the crisis in the east of the country, “that’s only half the amount we had secured by this time last year,” UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told journalists in New York on Friday.
Congolese health authorities are facing shortages of medical supplies as the DRC is now facing a cholera outbreak in six provinces.
OCHA is calling for greater protection of civilians in conflict-affected areas, and more support to prevent the collapse of essential services and address the root causes of the crisis.
