Relief agencies secure greater access to affected populations

Although long bureaucratic formalities had to be undertaken to get access to conflict zones, no cases of denied access, by either the Kinshasa government or rebel movements, had been reported in the last month, the UN OCHA/UNDP bulletin stated. That improved access to war-affected communities "should be attributed both to active lobbying on the part of the relief community as well as to the recognition by authorities at all levels of humanitarian imperatives", it added. The remaining pockets of inaccessibility were primarily down to military activity on the northern (Equateur) and southern (Katanga and Kasai) fronts, protracted insurrection in the Kivus and Orientale, and the re-emergence of tribal clashes in Orientale.