In response to the serious humanitarian emergency in North Kivu, Doctors for Peace activated immediate support in collaboration with its partner Pont de Solidarité/APSO, bringing food to the population fleeing the conflict in the Goma area.
139 families received an endowment of 5 kg of corn flour, a product at the basis of the local diet that is used to prepare foufou, a traditional food with a high nutritional value that is easy to prepare even in an emergency context. The same flour is also used by mothers to prepare meals for girls and boys.
Project Map
The context
Since the 1990s, the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been affected by armed conflicts, especially in the provinces of North Kivu, Ituri and Tanganyka. Over 25 years of conflict, rights violations and natural disasters, such as the eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano, have led to great instability, insecurity and poverty in the country.
Felix Tshisekedi, president since 2018, declared a state of siege (similar to the state of emergency) in the eastern provinces of the DRC (North Kivu and Ituri) in May 2021. This gave the military and police political leadership and control of the public administration and criminal justice system in the two provinces, gaining powers that led to the restriction of freedoms, war crimes and violations of international law, such as arbitrary arrests, the prohibition of protests, the prosecution of civilians before military courts and the difficulty of holding the authorities accountable for their actions. The measure has been extended about 30 times and will become permanent, despite the worsening security situation: armed groups have increased their activity in the region and the number of displaced civilians has doubled since then, data from the Kivu Security Tracker shows.
Today, a new war in North Kivu: the attacks of the M23 movement in North Kivu resumed in November 2021, eight years after the group had been militarily defeated by the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) and the United Nations Intervention Brigade, when it was on the outskirts of Goma, a key city on the border with Rwanda. The main conflict is between the M23 rebels, accused of receiving support from Rwanda, and the armed forces of the DRC. Since June, the M23 has occupied the strategic city of Bunagana and is getting closer and closer to Goma, now 8 km away. Added to this conflict is the constant violence in the streets and, on a larger scale, the tension between the governments of the DRC and Rwanda, which generates several crises that make it difficult to resolve the situation.
Activities
Among the numerous needs expressed by the local population, Doctors for Peace and the project partner APSO have identified the following needs:
- Food crisis: According to the United Nations, more than 26 million people have faced high levels of acute food insecurity. An estimated 3.4 million children suffer from acute malnutrition.
- Health crisis: in 2019, the probability of dying between birth and the first year of life is 63.8 per 1,000 live births, the infant mortality rate is 81 per 1,000 live births. Life expectancy is currently 65 years. The 14th Ebola outbreak was declared in April. Other epidemics, such as malaria, cholera, measles and bubonic fever, have claimed thousands of lives across the country, especially among the young population, despite efforts by the government and the international community to contain outbreaks. Frontline health workers continued to work without adequate or regular wages, giving rise to demonstrations often violently dispersed by the police. International funding for the health sector has been negatively affected by inefficiencies caused by the lack of ownership, transparency, accountability and coordination of national and international actors.
In order to respond to the needs that have emerged, in this first phase, Doctors for Peace intends to bring food and basic necessities to the families involved in the humanitarian crisis.
