(Ecofin Agency) - International donors will gather today April 13 in Geneva in the framework of the conference on the humanitarian crisis that hits DR Congo. Indeed, while talks are expected to accelerate the process to mobilize about $1.7 billion as financial aid for the country, the latter decided to decline the meeting.

As reasons to this decline, Kinshasa refutes the balance sheet of the humanitarian crisis established by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) saying that the institution dramatizes the situation and drives investors out of the country.

While the organization reports a figure of about 4.5 million displaced people, Kinshasa rejects this estimate and reports a number of 230,000 internally displaced persons, twenty times less than UNHCR’s report.

For the record, the conference is initiated by the United Nations Office of the Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the European Union (EU) and the Netherlands. It is expected to help 13 million people in humanitarian assistance need, according to UN.

The United Kingdom has announced that it will increase its participation by $31 million to fund a humanitarian aid plan whose financial mobilization rate is currently only 12%.

Let’s recall that at the end of March, 2018, the Congolese government announced the disbursement of $100 million as part of a national reintegration program for internally displaced persons over 18 months. This instability situation, occurs few months before the presidential election scheduled for December 2018.

Moutiou Adjibi Nourou (intern)