War-displaced women feed and play with their children at Rutshuru Hospital in the eastern province of North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, on July 22, 2022.ALEXIS HUGUET/AFP/Getty Images
Dominique Hyde is a Canadian based in Geneva. She is the director of external relations at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Refugee Agency.
No one has been spared suffering in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
I saw it in the scars and mutilation left by machete attacks. I heard it in the stories of violence, grief and loss – people whose loved ones had been shot or cut. It has left its mark on the faces of the women who told me, without exception, how they had been assaulted and raped. Every Congolese civilian I met when I visited the region last month had a horrific story of attacks by the brutal militias who terrorize the population.
Since a surge in violence that started in April, tens of thousands of Congolese have been displaced by the more than 120 armed groups at large in the provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu. These militias have raided towns, villages and camps for internally displaced people (IDPs), maiming and murdering civilians and setting shelters and buildings ablaze. In North Kivu alone, recent fighting between the Congolese Army and the M23 group has forced more than 200,000 people to flee their homes.
These latest outrages are being inflicted on a country that has already more than six million IDPs, the largest such displacement crisis in Africa. More than a million Congolese have fled to other countries, while the DRC itself hosts 520,000 refugees from neighbouring states.
Even before this spike in violence, the DRC was on the ropes. Weakened by decades of conflict, it is today among the world’s five poorest countries. By the end of last year, around 27 million Congolese, or a quarter of the population, were experiencing acute food insecurity.
A few thousand miles away, and the humanitarian response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis has set new standards – not just for funding but also for public and political solidarity.
No such generosity is being extended to the Congolese – indeed, at the end of the first half of 2022, only 19 per cent of UNHCR’s requested budget of US$225-million for the DRC situation had been funded, half the level at the same time last year – despite the massive needs.
More than four in five IDPs are not receiving adequate shelter, forced to sleep in churches, schools, out in the open, or having to return to their homes, exposing them once more to the militias. Women and girls at risk of sexual violence simply need a lock and a door to put it on. You don’t get that on the street.
The DRC has endured decades of violence and exploitation. The causes are long and complex – but the needs of its people are clear. Yet as matters stand, UNHCR and many other organizations will have to scale back or cease our work. Combined with drought in both eastern and southern Africa, and the spike in food prices stemming from the war in Ukraine, this will result in millions of displaced people going hungry.
We will be unable to provide the vital mental-health services and psychosocial support for victims of the militias, for children who have seen their parents murdered, for women who were raped and left for dead.
This is not just a plea for the DRC. Hundreds of organizations – large and small, local and international – working in other similar forgotten humanitarian crises are running out of money. They face a toxic blend of conflict, climate shocks, the socioeconomic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the devastating ripple effects of the Ukraine crisis. Such places show us the consequences of inaction and indifference – a glimpse into a future that will set new standards for dystopia.
The resilience, fortitude and sense of solidarity among those I met in Ituri province was astounding, but I was left appalled by the stark disparity in support for different people on the same planet. We should be outraged by our inability to protect innocent children, women and men, no matter where they are or where they are from.
Governments, regional and global financing entities, and the private sector have all rallied to the cause of Ukraine’s refugees, and rightly so. The ordinary Congolese civilians bearing the brunt of senseless violence deserve the same support. They are simply not getting it.
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