In October 2023, the EU announced it had spent €92 million for internally displaced persons in DR Congo, but IDPs said they hardly received support.
By Anicet Kimonyo
January 29, 2024. 11:55 am
However, internally displaced persons in the Kanyaruchinya camp told The Colonist Report Africa that they rarely received food and that what they mostly received was flour and maize without a stove to cook with. As a result, they resort to entering the protected Virunga National Park and cutting down trees, despite constant rape by an armed group.
2018 saw the official national ban on tree-cutting in Virunga National Park. The park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, covers 790,000 hectares and has a diverse range of habitats. Nevertheless, due to conflicts that have caused millions of people to be displaced in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the park is now vulnerable to armed groups and locals who want to cut down trees to sell for profit.
The Colonist Report Africa findings from locals also revealed that some of these IDPs live in Virunga National Park, waiting for people to give them jobs such as clearing the bush, burning and cutting down trees to get paid for their service. Also, the armed group finds themselves in some sessions of the park molesting, harassing, and raping women at any slight chance they have, but residents still find their way into the park.
In Virunga National Park, while Mama Sifa, a 20-year-old woman from Rugari, was looking for the woods, armed men repeatedly raped her. She told The Colonist Report Africa that she had no choice but to keep entering the park in search of wood and a job to survive.
Sifa said in her local language, “I come here if I find the job of a farmer where I can earn something to help my family, glory be to God; otherwise, it is only hunger that drives us here.”
Sifa has given up and is ready to bear whatever comes from her search for survival. “We come here, we get raped again and again, and we come back again; if you stay at home, you’re not going to eat anything,” she said as she carried her potatoes in her sack bag on her head, leaning forward for her boss to earn money that does not exceed 1500 Congolese francs (44 pence) to provide for her family.
Barahinyuje Sibomaba Jacques, the head of the displaced persons’ site at Kanyaruchinya 2, 5 kilometres away from Goma, told The Colonist Report Africa that the displaced people at the camp received nothing.
“We have a problem,” Jacques said and continued: “When we were at home, we ate our fill with balanced [diversified] food, including vegetables, meat, and so on, and we also had trees where we found firewood.
“Here [camp], however, we receive nothing in the way of help, and when we do get a little help, some of us go home without it because the people in charge have diverted it and we don’t know what to do, even though they’re the ones who do the recording.
“They know our numbers, and what’s worse, other displaced people are still arriving from the fighting zones, and so far they haven’t received any aid,’ he told The Colonist Report Africa in his local language.
When asked the last time his camp received support from any organisation, he said that since the beginning of January 2024, no one has supported his people. “With all the problems we’re experiencing here on the site and yet to find a bit of money, we still have to find help. Finding clothes is a bit complicated, and anything that can help us survive.
The major problem displaced people face at the camp is a lack of firewood to cook their food and during their meetings with aid workers, they [displaced people] have raised the issue, yet nothing has been done to salvage their situation. “ It has become a headache for our women, who manage by fetching firewood from the park. “This exposes them even more to bad weather, including rape in the bush., he added.
Jacques stated that the women who are raped in Virunga National Park while trying to get food find it difficult to report their cases to the doctor to get proper help. “Many of them are afraid and ashamed to say so and are left without a solution.”
When The Colonist Report Africa asked about the kind of support they have received from donors, Jacques said the food is mainly yellow dough in a common trunk.
Jacques explains, “All the displaced people from the Nyiragongo area gather in one place, either in Munigi or in Kanyaruchinya. But since the fighting has moved closer to this area, we’ve only been meeting in Mungi to receive our aid.
“We used to receive money and it depends on the size of each family. “In my case, I generally receive two 50-kilogram sacks of flour, and each household receives 35,000 Congolese francs.
“If we count 8 people per household, this means that the household will receive 35,000 Congolese francs per size [person].
“However, for the past two months, we have been receiving wheat flour and maize, also known as “yellow dough,” which he added is insufficient to sustain his family for two months.”
In August 2023, the EU announced the launch of a humanitarian air bridge operation in the eastern DRC. On August 22, 2023, two European flights are said to have delivered over 180 metric tonnes of health and nutrition supplies to the country. The European Commission reports 6.2 million displaced people in the DRC, the most in Africa.
The European Union pledged to continue providing life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable, often “people displaced by conflict or epidemics,” and stated that it allocated “nearly €92 million in humanitarian funding in 2023” to meet the needs of the DRC’s most vulnerable people. The EU, through its European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, also said it allocated €89.5 million in 2022.
According to a statement on the website, “the majority of EU-funded humanitarian projects are assisting vulnerable people in the country’s east, where persistent conflict is ongoing.
“The EU works with partners to provide food assistance and nutrition, shelter, protection, and emergency healthcare, including care for survivors of sexual violence
“Through its Humanitarian Air Flight, the EU provides air support to humanitarian organisations, enabling them to deliver aid to people in hard-to-reach areas.
“These EU humanitarian air bridges have delivered 440 metric tonnes of medical and nutritional supplies to the DRC, among other goods,” the EU added in a statement updated on October 31, 2023.
However, despite €92 million allocated to support displaced people in the DRC in 2023, some of the displaced people told The Colonist Report Africa that the support given hardly gets across to them, and the Virunga National Park is their saving grace to cut trees and sell them to make a profit.
The Colonist Report forwarded our findings to the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations’ Press Office for comment. We asked about the amount and type of food the EU provided to displaced people in the DRC, including those at the Kanyaruchinya camp where we visited.
In response, Daniel Puglisi, Press Officer for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management / Foreign Affairs and Security, forwarded the website information, which we have already seen.
The Colonist Report contacted Puglisi again and asked for a breakdown of the exact type of food given and other support to the displaced people in Eastern DRC, but we did not get a satisfactory response.
According to Puglisi, “the most crucial sectors are food security and livelihoods, which receive roughly 25–30% of ECHO funding in the DRC, then health (15–20% of funding), operations support (10–15%), water hygiene and sanitation (WASH) (10–15%), and protection (10–15%).”
“Across all sectors, about 15% of the response is implemented by multi-purpose cash programmes.”
The Colonist Report requested a specific donation for each household, but no response was received as of the publication of this report.
Virunga National Park lost 15.1 kha of tree cover between 2020 and 2022. According to Global Forest Watch, the park also lost 5.82 kha of humid primary forest between 2020 and 2022, accounting for 38% of the park’s overall loss of tree cover during that time. Additionally, there were over 290 fire alerts in 2023.
Prior to the DRC conflict, residents used their farmlands to collect firewood for heating, roasting, and cooking their meals; however, the conflict left millions of people stranded, some of whom The Colonist Report Africa understands fled their ancestral homes to seek refuge in the camps of Kanyaruchinya, Bujari, and Bushagara to the east of the city of Goma, and others camped in Bulengo, Rusayu, and Sake to the north of Goma. The World Food Programme also announced that it had provided nutrition assistance.
In May 2022, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and International Rescue Committee (IRC) reported that the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) internally displaced 37,000 people in four days.
Ndagijimana Justin, 19, a resident of Kibumba, was among the villagers who survived the M23 conflict. The Colonist Report Africa met him in the mountains of Kilimanyoka with his Tshukudu [a wooden scooter], which he used to transport the firewood he had fetched to the eastern DRC.
Justin uses his scooter to enter the park in search of firewood to provide food and health needs for his family. Virunga National Park is the only nearby park left for the people living at the Kanyaruchinya IDP camp.
Justin said: “We do everything we can to look for the woods near the road so that people can see us because far away we meet people who threaten us.
Although it is risky to enter the park because of the armed groups in the park, Justin does everything possible to get the wood taken to the city of Goma to sell to make some money to put food on his family’s table.
Goma is the capital of North Kivu Province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. DRC is about the size of Western Europe and among the five poorest nations in the world, with a population of around 60 million people in 2022 who live on less than £1.96 a day, according to the World Bank in 2023.
War-displaced people are desperately looking for ways to survive in the face of food and health challenges. The major challenge for the displaced people is the lack of daily food, water, drugs, clothing, and sanitary provisions, says Justin.
According to Justin, humanitarian organisations assist once a quarter, but unfortunately, the quantity of food supplied is not commensurate with their needs. “Again, until God knows when another windfall of humanitarian assistance arrives, and so when this food and relief materials assistance arrives, the displaced do not know how to cook due to the lack of coal and firewood.
“What we are asking for is to help us because we are suffering from a lack of food. Hunger wants to kill us; that’s why we try to come here [Virunga National Park], not knowing what to do.
“You are no longer afraid when you think about your children. That’s why we’re going,’’ said Kitsa Nzabayo, another war-displaced person who claims his entry into the park was motivated by hunger. He continued: “The government can’t kill us because we’re also fleeing hunger, and that’s what drives us to cross into the park,” said Justin.
Mambo Kawaya, president of civil society in Nyiragongo territory, wants the Congolese national police to create a buffer zone to reduce the illegal deforestation by displaced people. According to him, the constant deforestation in Virunga National Park is having a great impact on the reserved forest, and peace is a solution to reduce deforestation in Virunga National Park.
Kawaya said: “As a solution, we would always ask the Congolese National Police officials to reserve a buffer zone for the population of Nyiragongo.
“The political, administrative, and military authorities must find a solution, which is the restoration of peace, so that this displaced population can return to its original environment.”
Although the EU said its support also includes health care services, the displaced people also told The Colonist Report Africa that good health care and assistance are another issue for the people at the Kanyaruchinya camp.
The leader of Kanyaruchinya 2, Jacques, noted that the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital is in the camp— but it is not operating at full capacity. He stated the medicines in the hospital are “insignificant,” and the recent flu and malaria epidemics had a great impact on internally displaced persons, “which continue to claim more victims”—a statement that seems not to sit well with the MSF when contacted.
“Finding a little money to buy medicines at the pharmacy is quite a problem.
“For a while now, everyone at home has been ill, so I’ve sold everything, and now I’ve got nothing of the quantity I received.
“Usually, MSF teams make the rounds here on the site to monitor sick children. And it’s when they come by that we take the opportunity to tell them about our health problems, but so far we haven’t found a solution,” Jacques added.
Emma Dixon, MSF head of media, told The Colonist Report in an email that the MSF is surprised to learn about the comment from the Kanyaruchinya camp. “Are you certain that it concerns a health centre supported by MSF?
“We’re quite surprised: the health centre of Kanyaruchinya that we support since July 2022 has treated more than 102,150 patients in 2023, including more than 3040 deliveries, which requires a very large quantity of medicines and other medical inputs. For example, we treated 2,200 children with measles during the year, as well as 1,810 patients suffering from cholera and 2,600 victims of sexual violence.
“ We also organised 3 emergency reactive vaccination campaigns, including 2 against cholera, with a total of 335,462 people vaccinated, and 1 against measles, with 108,949 children vaccinated.
Dixon noted that the humanitarian response to the crisis is lacking, including medicine in the camp. “As we have been denouncing since the start of our emergency intervention, the international humanitarian response to this crisis is still largely lacking, and the scale of the medical needs in this camp—as in many others, unfortunately—far outstrips the humanitarian presence on the ground. MSF has been one of the few organisations on the ground since the beginning, and we cannot, on our own, meet all the urgent needs of hundreds of thousands of people who continue to suffer from health problems. It is crucial to step up the response to this crisis, which has been far too neglected.
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