EMMA BATHA, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports that Africa remains home to some of the world’s worst crises, including the much-overlooked tragedy unfolding in the Democratic Republic of Congo…
With millions of people on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe and children facing unspeakable violence, the Democratic Republic of Congo was the most neglected crisis in 2017, according to a survey of aid agencies.
Overshadowed by the Syrian war and Rohingya refugee exodus from Myanmar, Congo barely made headlines despite horrific violence that has erupted in the centre of the vast country, they said.
UNFOLDING CRISIS: Since 1994, the mineral-rich province of North Kivu has been a hotbed of activity in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a literal battleground for armies and armed groups who have plunged millions of people into a cycle of violence and poverty. Picture was taken in 2015. PICTURE: N Berger/OCHA
The Central African Republic, with its “off the charts” vulnerability, and Yemen – ravaged by war and hunger – ranked behind Congo in the Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of 20 leading aid organisations.
“A massive humanitarian crisis has been unfolding in the Congo almost unnoticed,” said Mark Smith, World Vision‘s emergencies chief.
“The scale and brutality of what is happening to children in hard to reach places is almost unimaginable.”
An insurrection against the government in the Greater Kasai region has displaced more than one million people in what the Norwegian Refugee Council called a “mega-crisis”.
CONGO’S OVERLOOKED KASAI CRISIS SOUNDS ALARM BELLS
With millions of people on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was named the most neglected crisis of 2017 in a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of aid agencies.
Aid workers are particularly alarmed by a conflict which has unfolded almost unnoticed in the central Kasai region, creating major displacement and hunger in a previously peaceful area. Here are some facts on Democratic Republic of Congo and Kasai.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
• 13.1 million people need assistance, an increase of nearly 80 per cent since the start of the year, and roughly equivalent to the combined population of the British cities of London, Birmingham and Manchester.
• 1.7 million were forced to flee their homes this year, an average of more than 5,500 people each day.
• This has brought the total number uprooted in DRC to 4.1 million, Africa’s largest displacement crisis.
• 7.7 million are severely food-insecure.
• The United Nations has appealed for $US1.69 billion for Congo in 2018, its third largest appeal after Syria and Yemen, and more than double the amount requested this year.
• The areas causing most alarm are in the Kasai region and the eastern provinces of South Kivu and Tanganyika.
• Analysts fear growing violence could spark a repeat of the conflicts between 1996 and 2003, mostly in the east, in which millions died, mainly from hunger and disease.
KASAI REGION
• An insurrection by the Kamuina Nsapu militia began after Congolese forces killed a local chief who was a critic of President Joseph Kabila. The political dispute has stoked ethnic rivalries.
• More than 3,000 people have died.
• UN officials say atrocities have been committed by both sides and civilians are bearing the brunt of the violence.
• At least 1.4 million were displaced at the peak of the crisis.
• Villages have been torched and hundreds of schools and health centres looted, damaged or destroyed.
• Fighting and displacement has disrupted farming.
• More than three million people are severely hungry.
• At least 400,000 children risk starving to death unless they receive urgent help
• Security improvements have enabled some people to go home, but many are returning to nothing.
Sources: OCHA, UNICEF
Food shortages have left millions hungry with hundreds of thousands of children at risk of dying.
Agencies have received accounts of mass killings, rapes and beheadings. There have also been reports of horrendous attacks on babies and young children.
Children as young as 10 have been recruited by armed groups, while others left orphaned are sleeping alone in forests.
Kasai’s poor roads and telecommunications have made access challenging, contributing to its invisibility, agencies said.
Provinces in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo also remain volatile. Across the country, 13.1 million people need assistance, nearly a third of whom are displaced.
World Vision said it believed years of repeated and overlapping conflicts in Congo meant it had “fallen off people’s radar” – a view echoed by others.
Congo was named by nearly half those polled, but many said there had been such a plethora of crises in 2017 – with at least four countries at risk of famine – that it was hard to pick the most neglected.
Oxfam named Central African Republic (CAR) as “the most forgotten of forgotten crises” with 2.4 million people needing help “in a country that most people don’t even know exists”.
CAR has been racked by violence since mainly Muslim rebels ousted the president in 2013, provoking a backlash from Christian militias.
The UN refugee agency said 1.1 million people – nearly a quarter of the population – had fallen through the cracks and warned the “calamitous situation” would worsen unless a massive funding shortfall was addressed.
Although Yemen has made headlines this year, agencies said the coverage did not begin to reflect the enormity of what was happening.
“The lack of public awareness…is truly shocking given the sheer scale of suffering and deliberate starvation of much of the population,” said Jean-Michel Grand, executive director of Action Against Hunger UK.
This week marked 1,000 days since the escalation of a conflict which has uprooted more than two million people, left 8.4 million close to famine and triggered a massive cholera epidemic.
The warring parties have attacked schools and hospitals and restricted aid.
“The past year has been incredibly harrowing,” said Islamic Relief Worldwide CEO Naser Haghamed.
“Despite an increase in media coverage and political intervention, the true scale of the emergency is still not dominant in the consciousness of the wider world.”
International Medical Corps said the level of need was “unfathomably immense” and the situation almost entirely manmade.
Two agencies flagged the displacement crisis in the Lake Chad Basin, which was voted the most neglected emergency in last year’s poll.
An eight-year campaign by Boko Haram militants to create an Islamist caliphate has affected millions of people.
With most coverage focused on Nigeria, Plan International singled out the impact on its forgotten neighbour Niger where more than 400,000 people need help.
It said militants were killing and threatening teachers, forcing children to miss school and raising their vulnerability to sexual violence, abduction and enslavement.
“These children deserve the world’s attention. The violence which is robbing a generation of an education and forcing them to grow up in a world of fear has got to stop,” said Plan’s humanitarian director Roger Yates.
With starvation threatening millions in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, one agency picked famine as the year’s most neglected crisis.
Mercy Corps‘ humanitarian chief Michael Bowers said food was increasingly being used as a “weapon of war” with little action taken by the international community.
“Global hunger is on the rise for the first time this century,” he said. “We fear 2018 will look much like 2017 without a massive drive to fight back hunger.”
