‘Shame’ on world leaders for neglect of displaced civilians in DRC, says aid chief

US and Europe criticised by head of Norwegian Refugee Council for neglect' of people living subhuman' existence

World leaders should be ashamed of their neglect of people whose lives were hanging by a thread" at a time of surging violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the international charity leader Jan Egeland has said.

In a stinging attack on aid cuts and the nationalistic winds" blowing across Europe and the US, the Norwegian Refugee Council's head told the Guardian how people were living out in the open, in overcrowded, unsanitary displacement encampments around the city of Goma, where 1.2 million people have had to flee from their homes as the M23 rebels advanced through the DRC's North and South Kivu provinces.