Maniema residents in need of extensive humanitarian aid, OCHA says

Residents of Maniema Province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo still lack sufficient humanitarian aid despite improved security nationwide following the establishment of a transitional government of national unity in June 2003, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday.

"Not bordering any country and not being of any strategic and military value, the province suffers from its isolation, which is why donors and humanitarian actors have paid it little attention," the OCHA office in Kindu, the capital of Maniema, said.

It said at least 1.5 million residents in the province were starving and suffering from endemic diseases. The people had experienced torture, arbitrary arrests, forcible displacement, murder, looting, arson, and rape. It added that there had been more than 1,525 registered cases of rape in Kindu and Kasongo in 2003.

Aid granted to the 165,427 internally displaced persons in the province remained "insignificant", OCHA reported, and those who returned to their villages faced tremendous difficulties in resettling.

"Returnees noticed, most of the time, that their homes were destroyed, their goods looted and their fields ransacked," OCHA said.

It added that hospitals, health centres, schools and businesses had been looted or closed in many localities. However, schools have reopened throughout the province after years of closure during the civil war. Nevertheless, these schools lacked windows, doors, furniture and basic teaching materials, OCHA said.

The isolation of the province and its dilapidated roads, it said, were the main reason for the lack of humanitarian intervention. The area is only accessible by air, but few air transport companies want to serve this province, despite of the existence of many airfields.

[OCHA item in French on www.monuc.org]