DRC: UN refugee agency prepares to register thousands of internally displaced
The United Nations refugee agency said today it has begun preparations to register thousands of internally displaced persons next week in the conflict-ravaged Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where almost 200,000 people have been driven from their homes in the last six months because of fighting between the Government and Mai Mai rebels.
The United Nations refugee agency said today it has begun preparations to register thousands of internally displaced persons next week in the conflict-ravaged Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where almost 200,000 people have been driven from their homes in the last six months because of fighting between the Government and Mai Mai rebels.
The registration, to be carried out in cooperation with the non-governmental organization (NGO) MSF-Belgium, is scheduled to begin on Tuesday in the Mitwaba area where around 15,000 to 20,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) are living in several villages, with between 50 and 100 more people arriving every day to escape the violence, a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson said in Geneva.
“UNHCR staff report that many of the new arrivals, after hiding for weeks in the bush, are in a terrible state, with few or no belongings and malnourished. Many are in a state of complete exhaustion and are suffering skin diseases,” spokesperson Ron Redmond told reporters.
“The exact scale of the humanitarian crisis is difficult to assess, as the situation in Katanga is characterized by fragile security and an absence of passable roads across the vast savannah-type landscape.”
Mr. Redmond said that an estimated 170,000 Congolese have been displaced over the past six months in Katanga province, which is the size of France, due to the fighting, adding that civilians also faced serious harassment and abuse by both sides, including rape of women and children, looting and destruction of villages.
“Once the Mitwaba registration is complete in about two weeks, we are planning to extend the registration to other IDP sites elsewhere in Katanga province,” he said, adding that alongside the registration, NGOs and UN agencies are delivering aid to the displaced, although the current humanitarian assistance is “far from adequate.”
An estimated 1.6 million Congolese are internally displaced, while some 420,000 remain in asylum as refugees in other countries.
Earlier this week, the Security Council endorsed the deployment of a European Union reserve force in the DRC to bolster stability in the vast country for its upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections and up to four months afterward. These elections, slated for 18 June, are supported by the largest and most expensive electoral assistance operation the UN has ever undertaken, on the hope that the process will cement the country's transition from years of bloody conflict, including a six-year civil war, during which over 4 million people have been killed.
Elsewhere in Africa, the UNHCR said today that along with teams from other aid agencies, it was assessing the humanitarian needs in northern Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp, after massive flooding left a two-year-old child dead and more than 2,000 refugees homeless in a camp that holds some 90,000, mostly from neighbouring South Sudan.