Another NGO returns to Bukavu

Humanitarian actors continue to return to the eastern Congolese town of Bukavu, as calm returns to the area following recent fighting between loyalist and dissident army troops. In a statement, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said on Saturday that it was due to return to the South Kivu provincial capital this week. IRC's return follows that of Save the Children-UK, which resumed operations in South Kivu on 26 June. In a statement issued on 30 June, Save the Children said it had begun distributing 1,000 emergency household kits to vulnerable families in the rural communities of Kavumu, Mudaka and Miti, north of Bukavu. IRC said programmes serving about one million people in eastern DRC had been suspended following the May-June fighting in Bukavu between loyalist soldiers and dissidents loyal to Gen Laurent Nkunda and Col Jules Mutebutsi. The dissidents, who had invaded Bukavu ostensibly to protect Congolese Tutsis, known as Banyamulenge, from persecution by the loyalist troops, withdrew on 8 June, and the loyalists re-entered the town a day later. Calm has since returned to the town. IRC said it was also assessing the security situation in the town of Kisangani, in the northeastern province of Orientale, where its offices had been looted during violent demonstrations following the dissidents' occupation of Bukavu. Some 514,000 people had been affected by IRC's suspension of activities. They were no longer receiving health, water or sanitation aid from IRC. IRC Country Director Werner Vansant told IRIN last week that IRC was monitoring the situation to determine when it could return to the field. He added that IRC had been working with local partners to evaluate the security situation. IRC also announced that it was carrying out a needs assessment in the Rwandan province of Cyangugu, to which thousands of Congolese refugees had fled the Bukavu fighting. The IRC programme manager for the Great Lakes region, David Sullivan, said the IRC had launched a programme to identify unaccompanied minors among the refugees in order to determine the best way of responding to their protection needs.