DR Congo: Top humanitarian official calls for "more, sustained attention" to crisis in Katanga

(Pweto, northern Katanga, 20 November 2014): Three years after a cycle of violence started displacing and affecting the livelihoods of over half a million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral-rich Katanga Province, there is an urgent need for greater attention on its humanitarian crisis, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official said today. “Katanga needs greater, sustained attention in order to find immediate solutions to the complex humanitarian needs that have been affecting civilians”, Humanitarian Coordinator Moustapha Soumaré said today in Pweto, a northern town that is home to some 178,000 internally displaced, where he just wrapped up a three-day mission.

From 17-19 November, Soumaré led a mission of UN agencies, NGOs and international donors, to witness the humanitarian needs, take stock of current response efforts and challenges, and engage actors on the outlook over the coming months. The mission’s highlights were the field trips in Pweto where the delegation visited a remedial school for displaced children and an aid distribution fair in Mwenge, a small village north of Pweto.

Pweto is one of the areas that make up what aid agencies call “the Triangle of Death”, accounting for 30% of Katanga’s total IDP population estimated at 582,000. With the areas of Manono and Mitwaba, the “Triangle” has been the site of multiple forms of violence and abuses against civilians. Over the past three years, the number of people displaced has jumped from some 55,000 in late November 2011 to over 582,000 today. The violence has forced thousands of children out of schools and disrupted economic activities of families. Since the beginning of the year, over 14,000 protection incidents have been recorded, a seven-fold increase in comparison to 2013. “Protecting civilians is paramount in Katanga, with children and women continuing to be the most affected. It is incumbent upon us to create the favorable conditions conducive to protecting all civilians”, Soumaré said.

Against the backdrop of persistent needs, donors have contributed around USD 24 million between March 2013 and June 2014, money that, among other things, allowed to deliver some 12,000 tons of food to over some 730,000 people, to vaccinate over 7 million children against measles and to provide seeds and farming equipment to over 70,000 people.

In addition to a humanitarian crisis, Katanga is also experiencing development challenges. The remedial school program, funded by a multi-donor program called the “Pooled Fund” and in which displaced children and those formerly associated with armed groups are enrolled, was the “perfect example” of the linkages that need to exist between emergency and development actors, Soumaré said. On Monday, the head of the provincial parliament told the mission that jobs for youth are key to dissuading them from joining the armed groups.

Today, with Katanga’s crisis, it is all the eastern provinces that are unstable. However the province is stretched thin in terms of humanitarian actors and it is estimated that at least another $24 million are needed to cover the priority humanitarian needs. “Katanga’s humanitarian needs have been off the radar. We need to ensure that those needs receive the attention they deserve. Katanga needs peace and stability, but that can only come by investing in today’s humanitarian and development needs,” Soumaré said.