This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

DR Congo: desperate situation of millions displaced by armed violence

Recurring attacks by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continue to drive forced displacement and extreme hardship for millions of Congolese, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

The country has 6.2 million internally displaced people, while more than 1.3 million have become refugees.

UNHCR said that Goma, the capital of eastern DRC’s North Kivu province, hosts over 560,000 displaced people in and around the city. Many live in spontaneous sites on the side of the road, in dire conditions, despite the efforts of humanitarian actors.

Here’s Elizabeth Tan, UNHCR’s Director of International Protection, who recently returned from North Kivu:

“I spoke to a woman there who had five children. She didn’t have any food even for that day and so she had sent her children out to collect firewood and to try and make a little bit of money. And her main concern was, would they come back and would her girls come back without having suffered an attack in the forest.”

UNHCR warned that the lack of adequate sanitation and overcrowding are fuelling risks of cholera and measles outbreaks, while people desperately try to survive.

Hunger on the horizon for over four million in northeast Nigeria

Widespread hunger and child malnutrition are looming in northeast Nigeria, as the lean season is set to begin next month.

As the period between harvests where people struggle to meet their food needs draws closer, UN aid coordination office, OCHA said on Friday that 4.3 million people in the conflict-affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, will likely face severe hunger between June and August. Almost 600,000 people could face emergency levels of food shortages.

OCHA also says that an estimated two million children under five in the three states are at risk of wasting, the most immediate and life-threatening form of malnutrition.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is scaling up to provide food and nutrition assistance to over two million, while the UN Children’s Fund is providing therapeutic treatment to severely wasted children.

However, more funding is urgently needed. Humanitarians in northeast Nigeria require $1.3 billion to provide assistance this year but have so far received just over 11 per cent of that amount.

Safer Tanker: additional funds announced for UN operation to avert Red Sea oil spill

A UN plan to prevent a catastrophic oil spill from the Safer tanker off Yemen’s Red Sea coast received additional funding on Thursday, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said.

Some $8 million in pledges were announced at an event co-hosted by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands on Thursday, but close to $24 million more is still needed for the operation’s emergency phase to be implemented by UNDP, starting this month.

Due to the conflict in Yemen, the tanker has decayed to the point where it could explode or break apart, which would have disastrous effects on the region and beyond, UNDP said.

In an appeal for funding to support the salvage operation, UNDP chief Achim Steiner said that “$20 million now could save $20 billion in potential costs later…Millions stand to suffer in the event of an oil spill from the FSO Safer”.

Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer, UN News.