UN agency hands over administration of camp for the displaced

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began handing over to a French NGO on Saturday the coordination and supervision of a camp hosting 11,240 internally displaced people in Bunia town, Ituri District, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The OCHA camp manager, Seraphim Kazadi, told IRIN that by Thursday the NGO, Atlas, would have fully taken over the camp's administration. OCHA would from then serve only in an advisory capacity.

He said OCHA began its coordination effort at the Bunia airport campsite for the displaced persons in June. The majority of the camp’s occupants gathered inside the airport in May to escape the inter-militia fighting that followed the withdrawal of the Ugandan army on 6 May. The displaced persons were moved to their present camp when the UN Mission in the country, known as MONUC, provided security.

Kazadi said most of the displaced were women and children. Initially, he said, up to 200 people came into the camp each day but that the flow had since decreased substantially.

"For instance, a total of 54 people came into the camp last week, making it an average of less than ten people a day," he said.

OCHA, in conjunction with other UN agencies and NGOs has been providing to the camp a variety of aid items such as kitchen utensils, food, and blankets; as well as health, water and sanitation services.

He said that OCHA initially encountered difficulties coordinating activities at the camp because of inadequate plastic sheeting for tents, with families having to share one tent.

"However, 70 percent of these difficulties have been overcome, the congestion has reduced to about seven families in one tent and we are trying to have one family per tent," he said.

Kazadi said the camp was divided into six neighbourhoods – lettered A through F – where there are recreational activities such as football and children's games. All communities were represented in the camp, he said, and even the traditionally rival Hema and Lendu IDPs were living together.

The airport camp is the only such IDP facility OCHA has recognised, because of its multiethnic composition. Another camp in the town, hosting some 1,200 people, is run by a local NGO. Kazadi said OCHA did not recognise this facility because it contained only one ethnic group, the Hema, who had refused to move to the airport site.

The displaced are still in the camps, fearing attack if they to return to their homes. They said although the French-led international multinational force that was deployed in June to secure Bunia had managed to stop militias from entering the town with firearms, many of these fighters had come to their homes at night and threatened violence.