Almost half of the children in the Congolese province of Ituri suffer from chronic malnutrition

Nearly a hundred people, most of them children, have starved to death since the beginning of the year.

June 23 (EUROPA PRESS) –

At least 47 percent of children under the age of five in the Congolese province of Ituri, in the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, suffer from chronic malnutrition amid the wave of violence caused by armed militias operating in the area.

According to a report from the National Nutrition Program, five percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition and are at risk of death, according to the agency’s director, Béatrice Kalenga, during a press conference this past Thursday in the state capital, Bunia.

The deputy governor of the province, Raus Chalwe, added for his part that the restoration of peace in the territory is a priority to address the nutritional crisis that the population of a province is going through where close to a hundred people have starved to death since beginning of 2023 in particular in the territory of Djugu, collects Radio Okapi.

It should be remembered that four of Ituri’s main armed groups, including fearsome militias such as the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO), agreed earlier this month to a ceasefire agreement with a view to creating a sheet of route to a definitive cessation of hostilities in a place that has been under a state of emergency for almost two years.

The four militias –CODECO, the Ituri Patriotic Resistance Front (FRPI), the Congo Patriotic and Integrationist Front (FPIC) and the Ituri Popular Self-Defense Movement (MAPI)– pledge to cease hostilities against the Army the Congolese as well as the attacks against the civilian population, as well as “promoting the return of the displaced and refugees to their places of origin, not carrying weapons or any military sign and not giving in to any influence, manipulation aimed at disrupting the peace, the security and social cohesion in Ituri”.

The militias and the rest of the signatories also undertake to “materialize” the so-called Disarmament, Demobilization, Stabilization and Community Recovery Program to guarantee the reintegration of the militiamen into civil society and to take the necessary measures so that violence does not reproduce itself community level.