June 20 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has expressed concern about the increase in humanitarian need due to the increase in “relentless violence”, food shortages, lack of security and the spread of diseases in the Congolese provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.
“The brutality unleashed by armed groups on local communities and the deep humanitarian need of the people is unparalleled. The suffering is immense. Millions of people are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. We are fully committed to this scale-up of our response,” he said. the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Bruno Lemarquis.
Last week alone, some 50 people, including women and children, were massacred in a camp for displaced persons in Ituri province, according to an OCHA statement.
The activation of the emergency protocols are intended to call on all UN humanitarian agencies in the DRC, as well as their partners, to deploy “additional capacities and resources”.
“We call on donors to provide more support, although humanitarian assistance is not a long-term solution. (…). But, above all, we need the violence to stop,” Lemarquis remarked.
In addition, the UN has asked all armed groups operating in these provinces to cease their attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Since March 2022, some 2.8 million people have had to leave their homes in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri, and the number of internally displaced persons in the DRC stands at 6.3 million people, the highest in Africa, according to the report.
These attacks have caused many rural communities to abandon their land, causing food production to drop by 25 percent over the last year in Ituri alone.
Hunger and malnutrition have increased not only due to violence, but also due to natural disasters, widespread poverty and the lack of basic services in the country; the continuous outbreaks of Ebola, measles or cholera have aggravated the situation.
In addition, gender violence is on the order of the day: more than 31,000 cases have been registered in the first quarter of 2023 alone, although the report admits that the figure could be much higher; the recruitment of children, as well as their kidnapping and sexual violence directed against them, are other issues that concern the organization.
