DR of Congo: UN food drops reach some, but many more missing out due to lack of funds

Although United Nations-sponsored airdrops into the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) violence-wracked Katanga province have provided enough food for some 34,700 displaced people, a severe lack of funds is preventing a quarter of a million others from being reached, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reported today.

“We are very pleased to announce the success of this first airdrop into DRC,” WFP Country Director Felix Bamezon said of the operation, which began in April and is the agency’s first food airdrop outside Sudan in eight years.

“But we are not content with what has been achieved. We need to reach many more people in the next few months, particularly in North Kivu (province),” he added of the latest crises, in which an estimated 220,000 people have been uprooted by fighting between the Government and Mai Mai rebels in Katanga and another 80,000 displaced in North Kivu Province.

With just three months left of its overall two-and-a-half year Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation in the DRC, WFP still has a critical 36 per cent shortfall, or $69 million of the $191 million needed to help up to 1.6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and other vulnerable people throughout the vast country.

This leaves very little funding to assist the IDPs in Katanga or in North Kivu, where WFP was forced to cut rations during the last distribution due to the shortfall.

Although expensive, WFP chose airdrops in south-eastern Katanga province because the rainy season, rising overland transport costs and insecurity have made it difficult to use roads. Food trucks were taking up to eight weeks to reach distribution sites from Katanga’s provincial capital of Lubumbashi.

To feed people who have fled to the towns of Dubie, Sampwe and Mitwaba, an Antonov-12 aircraft has spent just over three weeks dropping 336 metric tonnes of commodities, at nearly twice the cost of road transport.

“Our village was totally destroyed by armed men. I feed my child with what I have - some cassava - but I am really happy that aid has arrived,” Claudine Kambemba said in Sampwe after seeing food airdropped not far from her camp.

WFP’s partner non-governmental organization (NGO) last week completed distributing cereals, lentils, oil and salt to more than 8,750 people in Sampwe. Distributions of air dropped food are taking place in the next few days for 9,980 people in Mitwaba and 16,000 people in Dubie.