WFP delivers emergency food to thousands of displaced

WFP has started distributing emergency food rations to more than 64,000 people displaced by the fighting in the province Katanga in southern DRC. The organisation made the announcement on Friday, saying it will deliver some 367 mt of food, mainly cereals, peas and oil to Malemba-Nkulu about 1,350 km southeast of Kinshasa, for distribution to some 44,000 people.
"It is the first delivery of relief supplies by an aid agency to this remote and difficult to access area of the DRC," WFP noted. The food aid was dispatched by train and on barges from Lubumbashi, Katanga's capital. WFP also started distributing during the week, another 163 mt of food to more than 20,000 people displaced in and around Lubumbashi.

"With access to large parts of the DRC improving, we have managed to assess the situation of dozens of communities and displaced people throughout the country," WFP Representative in Kinshasa Kees Tuinenburg said. "Malnutrition is high in many areas visited by aid agencies like the province of Katanga and internally displaced people are clearly those most in need of food assistance." Some displaced people are barely managing to survive by cultivating small plots of land or working in farms
owned by their host community, WFP noted, adding that others are relying on the generosity of the host population to feed them. The UN estimates that there are some 1.3 million people in DRC who have been uprooted from their homes by war and are living in precarious conditions throughout the country. Since February, it said, fighting mainly in north and south Kivu had displaced 90,000 more people.