The Director of Operations and Advocacy of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Edem Wosornu, said that the situation is “the worst” it has ever been, with around 8 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance in the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri.
Briefing journalists in New York on Tuesday (5 Set) after a visit to the country with other UN officials and partners, Wosornu said, “What we saw and heard in the Democratic Republic of Congo was shocking, heartbreaking and sobering. We have seen that in the past 18 months alone the humanitarian situation in eastern Congo has deteriorated to an alarming extent.”
According to the OCHA official, 26.2 million people are food insecure and one in five Congolese need some form of humanitarian assistance.
Wosornu, also highlighted the issue of gender-based violence “being perpetrated on a massive and distressing scale”, noting that “in the first six months of 2023 alone, more than 35,000 survivors have sought access to services for gender-based violence across the three provinces alone.
Wosornu added, “We met with families who have been displaced for months and in some cases for years, a good number of them forced to move from one displacement site to the next due to violence by armed groups that prevents them from returning home. These are people who've lost everything.”
The Director of Operations and Advocacy concluded with three requests.
“I have three asks coming out of this mission. This is what we need to be able to do more. Number one is the protection of civilians, access, and security. Number two is funding. We've only received 1/3 of the amount of funds required to be able to respond at scale and speed. And number three, to repeat what the people of Congo have said to us in this mission, they want peace and political processes and solutions,” said Wosornu.
Briefing journalists from London, the Humanitarian Director of the Save the Children Global, Gabriella Waaijman, who also participated in the visit, noted that DRC already has one of the highest numbers of displaced people in the world, the highest number of food insecure people in the world and the highest number of grave violations against children in the world.
But, she added, “In 2023, the number of internally displaced people grew by a further one million. So no, this is not business as usual. This is an acute crisis on top of an already super-sized one.”
Waaijman concluded, “Simply put, we need more money, more money to scale up the lifesaving interventions, but it's not going to be enough. What people really need is peace. They need their government to step up and help them return home safely, or else provide them with land so that they can be settled elsewhere and start anew. It is only the responsibility of the Congolese government and the combined support of the diplomatic and development community, the donors, and humanitarians so that we can scale up the emergency response in Eastern DRC to save more lives and alleviate the hardship and risks faced by those fortunately displaced from their homes due to conflict.”
