  Women preparing Fufu | Wikimedia Commons
By Babukar Kashka
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
NAIROBI (IDN) – The life of around 170,000 Congolese refugees, the vast majority of whom are children and women, is at most risk. They abandoned hearth and home leaving everything behind to flee death. Now some 35 dollars are needed to save a child, a woman or an elderly. The question is whether the world is ready to help.
Apparently, the answer is not so clear. Otherwise, the UN would not have launched a new appeal to international community, asking for 60 million dollars to help these refugees from the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who have fled ethnic violence and are seeking refuge in neighbouring Republic of Congo (RoC).
The funds will help the 110,000 refugees, as well as 58,000 people in the Republic of Congo’s host areas for a six-month period, according to a UN report.
Clashes broke out last October when Enyele militiamen launched deadly assaults on ethnic Munzayas over fishing and farming rights in the Dongo area of Equateur province.
Tensions have enveloped most of Equateur, sending some 114,000 to the Republic of Congo, driving some 60,000 to other parts of the province, and forcing an additional 17,000 people to seek refuge in the Central African Republic (CAR).
The government and people of the ROC have once again responded generously to refugees escaping fighting in the DRC, said John Holmes, UN under secretary general for Humanitarian Affairs.
“But they have very limited resources and a small population, over half of whom subsist on 1.25 dollars per day,” he explained. “Significant support is therefore required from the international community.”
The refugees are scattered across more than 100 sites – living with host families, sheltering in abandoned huts or building makeshift settlements – along a 500-kilometre stretch of the Oubangui River between Liranga district and the RoC’s border with the CAR.
In most areas, says the UN, they vastly outnumber the local population by a ratio of five to one.
Low river levels are also compounding difficulties, resulting in relief supplies having to be ferried or flown in.
TOP NEEDS
The Congolese government, UN agencies and other groups carried out two assessment missions last November, which found that “food, livelihood support, clean water, health care and education as among the top needs”.
Social services, if they existed in areas where refugees are now living, are completely overwhelmed, and the influx of refugees is also heavily straining local resources, such as water, wood and fish.
In December, the UN Central Emergency Relief Fund (CERF) – which aims to speed up relief operations for humanitarian emergencies and make funds available quickly after a disaster, when people are most at risk – allocated nearly 8 million dollars to the crisis, with bilateral funding also having been put forward.
This leaves the unmet portion of the appeal launched March 10 at 41 million dollars, the UN reports.
In fact, of the 59 million dollars now appealed for, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 20 million dollars are needed to help increase overall protection and boost logistical capacity.
The funds will also be used for providing primary education, shelter and clean water for more than 20,000 children.
“Our concern is that four months into exile, the refuges are still lacking basic humanitarian aid, despite our efforts,” UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming said. “So far, we’ve been able to cover just 30 per cent of the needs of this huge population for food, sanitation, shelter, health care and primary education.”
Several UN agencies are taking part in this new UN appeal on March 10, as it has been joined by the World Food Programme, the UN Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, the UN Development Programme, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and the UN Population Fund.
NO SURPRISE
Meanwhile, the international community could by no means pretend ignoring the Congolese drama. The sole additional news are the inter-ethnic fights that forced nearly 160,000 to flee.
In fact, other massacres had taken place shortly before these inter-ethnic fights, such as the killing of civilians by both governmental troops and rebel groups between January and September last year, that is immediately before the start of inter-ethnic fights.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has issued a 183-page report on these killings. Titled “You Will Be Punished: Attacks on Civilians in Eastern Congo”, the report, released in December 2009, details the “deliberate killing” of more than 1,400 civilians by government and rebel forces between January and September 2009.
Anneke Van Woudenberg, HRW senior researcher on the DRC, underlined the “calculated nature” of the attacks. “These were not civilians who were caught in the crossfire. These were not civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. These were civilians who were deliberately targeted.”
Based on 23 fact-finding missions carried out by HRW, and interviews with over 600 victims, witnesses and family members, the report covers two phases of operations: a five-week joint operation between the Congolese and Rwandan forces against the FDLR (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda), which began in January, and the Congolese military’s operations targeting the FDLR.
HRW details the FDLR’s “deliberate strategy launched early this year to attack civilians so as to create a humanitarian catastrophe,” and describes “dramatic increases in sexual violence, forced labour for the transportation of weapons and ammunition –particularly by the Congolese army- and widespread burning of villages, homes, schools, churches and other structures.”
EXPLOITED
As reported by IDN earlier this year, this tragedy is taking place in three former European colonies with precious natural resources.
The DR Congo is the world's largest producer of cobalt ore and a major producer of copper and industrial diamonds. It has significant deposits of tantalum, which is used in the fabrication of electronic components in computers and mobile phones. Smuggling of coltan and cassiterite, the ores of tantalum and tin helped fuel the war in the Eastern Congo.
The Republic of Congo’s economy had been based on rural agriculture and handicrafts, while its industrial sector relied mainly on petroleum. Now oil extraction has supplanted forestry as the main basis of its economy.
For its part, the Republic of the Congo also has base metal, gold, iron and phosphate deposits.
Meanwhile, the Central African Republic, which is among the ten poorest in Africa bases its exports on locally produced alcohol, diamonds, and ivory. But diamonds constitute its most important export, accounting for around 50 percent of export revenues. Between 30-50 percent of the diamonds produced each year leave the country clandestinely.
The massive exploitation of the three countries’ natural resources by giant multinationals has been among the main causes of poverty, tribal conflicts and brutal human rights abuses.
In DR Congo, armed groups reportedly supported by multinationals, have been resorting to rape and sexual violence as a war tool to terrorise local communities and force them to flee far away from the exploitation sites. Over 300,000 cases of rape affecting women, young girls and boys, have been reported.
Meanwhile, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development informed in February this year that Africa is likely to get only 12 billion out of the 25 billions dollar aid increase pledged by the world's richest nations in 2005. (IDN-InDepthNews/12.03.2010)
Copyright © 2010 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters
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