The aid agency Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) on Tuesday partly shut down operations in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because of ”limitless” violence, leaving more than 100 000 displaced people virtually without aid.
MSF said it is halting aid work in Ituri province, outside the town of Bunia, because it is too unsafe to work there following the kidnapping and subsequent release of two of its staff in June.
”Today the reality is plain: populations living outside Bunia have been left to fend for themselves and given over to the limitless violence of armed groups,” the medical charity said in a report on the situation in the region.
Most of the 100 000 displaced, grouped in camps or rural towns, are already weakened by diseases such as malaria and suffering from a shortage of food, water and basic health care, MSF officials said.
Aid will continue to be provided inside Bunia at an emergency hospital there, which is already overrun with the sick and wounded, they added.
MSF declined to identify the armed groups, pointing instead to a ”general failure” in the region despite the active military presence of the United Nations mission in the DRC.
”Overall, the authorities are not managing. It’s a failure at a number of levels,” said Laurent Ligozat, emergency programme manager at MSF.
Aid agencies including MSF had temporarily halted their operations in the troubled area in February amid insecurity caused by militias who killed nine peacekeepers and a subsequent hard-hitting offensive by the UN force.
Ituri, a region rich in mineral resources, has been a theatre of clashes, mostly between the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups, that have claimed at least 50 000 lives since 1999.
Marilyn McHaig, director of operations at MSF, said the levels of violence, mainly targeting civilians, have remained the same for months, including widespread rapes.
”One of the striking things is the sexual violence, the patterns have not really changed,” she said.
Two MSF employees, a French logistical expert and a Congolese driver, were freed on June 11 after being abducted during a mission to one of the camps of displaced people. They were held for more than a week. — Sapa-AFP