Refugee organisation issues update on IDPs

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) on Tuesday said that despite a ceasefire between primary armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since January 2001, fighting is still in progress in the north and northeast, where most of the 2.2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) are located, as of February 2002. In a new profile of the DRC, the organisation points out that the humanitarian situation remains desperate and, due to insecurity and lack of funding, the international response is far from sufficient to cover the needs of the displaced. The organisation said most of the over 2.2 million IDPs were in the east, particularly in North and South Kivu, Province Orientale and northern Katanga, the areas most affected by the war. It was estimated that more than 2.5 million people had died in the DRC since 1998 in the context of the war, although most of them had succumbed to disease and malnutrition, NRC said. The dramatic internal-displacement situation in the DRC was the result of confrontations between various groups - both external and internal - to accede to power, accompanied by inter-ethnic rivalry in the central and eastern regions, NRC said. It said 16 million people, or 33 percent of the DRC population, had critical food needs as a result of prolonged displacement and other factors. It had been reported that about 64 percent of people in eastern DRC were undernourished, NRC said, noting that this was the highest figure in the world, according to Oxfam. The human rights situation was very critical, it said, citing United Nations agencies as well as nongovernmental organisations as regularly reporting widespread killings, torture and other human rights abuses against civilians by armed groups on all sides. The organisation also noted that access to government-controlled regions had improved as a result of the simplification of procedures for international humanitarian agencies. Humanitarian agencies have frequently been forced to suspend operations in rebel-held territory because of insecurity and localised violence in certain parts of the Kivus, Maniema (which is to the east of South Kivu), northern Katanga and Ituri in the northeast. The full report can be accessed at http://www.idpproject.org