2 Emergency Services Personnel Deployed to Congo

On Thursday 22 December 2022, Luxembourg's Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, together with the Directorate for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Action, the Ministry of the Interior and the Grand-Ducal Fire and Rescue Corps (CGDIS), confirmed that two members of the CGDIS Humanitarian Intervention Team are being deployed on a humanitarian mission to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Today, 22 December, a first member of the Humanitarian Intervention Team of the CGDIS departed for the Democratic Republic of Congo. The departure of a second member is scheduled for Monday 26 December. They will form part of the United Nations System for Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) emergency response team, whose request for deployment was made following flooding caused by heavy rains from 12 to 13 December 2022 in Kinshasa which killed more than 120 people and destroyed at least 282 houses. The mission will last about four weeks.

The Humanitarian Intervention Team intervenes outside Luxembourg in the event of very serious calamitous events, by order of the government, either at the request of the country or countries concerned, or within the framework of international assistance.

UNDAC teams are managed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), a long-standing partner of Luxembourg Development Cooperation, and deploy on a short-term basis anywhere in the world to help coordinate the humanitarian response internationally and carry out rapid assessments.