The European Commission announced, on 5 March, that it was scaling up its funds for humanitarian relief to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by 10% compared to the past year. A total of €59 million in humanitarian aid will be made available to the country in 2012. “Millions of people in the DRC are going through one of the world’s longest emergencies,” Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said. “We need to prevent the whole country from becoming a forgotten crisis of 66 million people,” she argued. Since 2005, the Commission has provided €367 million in humanitarian aid to the DRC.