RDC: Communique de la Coordonnatrice Humanitaire en Republique Democratique du Congo suite a la Mort de Deux Travailleurs Humanitaires au Nord-Kivu (19.02.2018)

RDC – CENCO: “Declaration de la Conference Episcopale Nationale du Congo – A l’issue de l’Assemblee Pleniere Extraordinaire du 15 au 17 Fevier 2018” (17.02.2018)

Burundi: Recent reports indicates that CENI is preparing to rig the referendum!

I wonder if the Commission Electorale Nationale Independante (CENI) are preparing to rig the next election, as their voting register and the quickly rising numbers making it seems so. Since on the 13th February 2018, the total registered voters was 2.505.829 voters. This was numbers vouched by the CENI Ambassador Pierre Clavier Ndayicariye. But now the official numbers on the 15th February are now the registered voters risen to 4.105.481. This to prepare for the referendum that fixes the Constitution so that President Pierre Nkurunziza can continue to rule for his fourth term. Since he is already on his third term after the 2015 election. Therefore, the reasons for the crackdown and aggressive attacks on opposition ever since.

So even with the changes and rising amounts of voters, the extended registration is supposed to end today. That is why we shouldn’t expect anyone of the numbers previously mentioned to be the final. As the algorithms and the end-game isn’t ready fixed yet. That is why CENI has already worked to fix it and find their masses of functioning numbers to crunching correctly. Nothing else makes sense at this point. Why else come with such different numbers and make sure the process of registration takes longer time? If you didn’t plan to use the numbers in a manner that isn’t preparing to cook them. 

To make it even worse there are open reports that the CNDD-FDD ruling party have called to “tie up” and “break the teeth” of the ones who are planning to vote “no” in the coming referendum. That referendum, which would give power to Nkurunziza until 2034. So, they are planning to continue their oppressive behavior and also oppress the public for one person and no-one else.

Also to get people to register themselves to the next elections, the Youth Militia of the Ruling Regime Inbonerakure has been used to spread fear and pick up people at the market. To make sure people are going, as much as the spreading of fear. There isn’t anything that Nkurunziza wouldn’t do to make sure he is ruling as long as he can. If he has to cheat and make the numbers sounding better for him. Why not do that? Because he does whatever else to stay in power? Taking down opposition, making them vanish or even becoming dust. Nothing has stopped him and nothing seems to be far fetched in his Presidency. 

The CENI, CNDD-FDD and Inbonerakure are all ready to serve the President and bring enough power to the public. To make sure they are all falling in line, if not they will start suffering. That is the signal the Presidency and the Ruling regime do. Peace.

World Food Programme Broadens Operation to Stem Severe Hunger in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kasai Region (16.02.2018)

Assessments showed that 3.2 million people, a quarter of the region’s population of mostly subsistence farmers, were desperately short of Food.

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo, February 16, 2018 -In the face of escalating violence, daunting logistical challenges and insufficient funding, the United Nations World Food Programme is energizing two key elements of its emergency operation to prevent famine in war-ravaged Kasai: cash distributions to the most vulnerable and specialist support to check acute malnutrition in women and young children.

Since the launch last week of the cash initiative – a cost-efficient alternative to in-kind support that allows beneficiaries to buy what they want in recovering local markets – 38,000 people have received the equivalent of US$15 each for a month, enough to meet their basic food needs. The intention is to more than double that reach in the coming weeks.

Recent airlifts from France of Plumpy’Sup, a micronutrient-rich ready-to-use supplementary food, have enabled a significant scale-up of WFP’s nutrition interventions in Kasai: 56,000 malnourished children treated in January, up from 21,000 in the final quarter of last year. The number is to grow by 20,000 a month, to 140,000 in June.

“The nutrition and cash programmes are life-saving, and must quickly expand”, said Claude Jibidar, WFP’s Representative in DRC. “We’re not doing nearly as much as we could in Kasai because the obstacles are huge. But unless we collectively rise to the challenges, many more people, including the weakest women and children, will die”.

WFP launched its assistance programme following the eruption of brutal political and ethnic violence in mid-2016 that claimed countless lives, razed entire villages and forced hundreds of thousands of families from their homes. Assessments showed that 3.2 million people, a quarter of the region’s population of mostly subsistence farmers, were desperately short of food.

Without a prior presence in Kasai, between September and December last year WFP achieved a tenfold increase in the number of people receiving food rations, to 400,000. But lagging donations forced a heavy reliance on scarce internal funds, and a halving of those rations – of cereal, beans, vegetable oil and salt – in November.

Continued funding constraints, an upsurge in fighting between pro- and anti-government forces and a rapid, rainy season deterioration of the already poor road network saw the number receiving half-rations drop to 130,000 in January.

“That reversal has to be corrected, and quickly”, said Jibidar. “We’ve shown we have capacity to deliver, but to reach sufficient scale we need the fighting to stop and donors to step up”.

Limited funding is also a major challenge in the eastern DRC provinces of Tanganyika and South Kivu, where WFP is scaling up to meet the needs of growing conflict-displaced populations as part of a broad push by UN agencies and NGOs.

Rwanda Defence Force: “Request for EJVM Verification of DRC Troops Violation on Rwandan Territory” (14.02.2018)

RDC: CLC – “Trois jounees de jeune et de priere des pretres, religieux et religieuses de Kinshasa pour la RDC (de mercerdi 14 a samedi 17 fevrier 2018) – (13.02.2018)

RDC: CLC – “Troisieme Appel du Comite Laic De Coordination Dimanche 25 Fevrier 2018 – Marchons pour Dire Non a La Dictature!” (10.02.2018)

DR Congo: Call for an International Donor Conference (09.02.2018)

By Samy Badibanga, former Prime Minister of DRC.

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo, February 9, 2018 – The political conundrum of the elections has blinded us all: the emergency in DR Congo is political as much as it is human and humanitarian. Of course, everything must be done so that the Congolese people can choose their leaders at the end of 2018. But, at the beginning of 2018, the top priority is to protect the lives of 13 million people threatened by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Kasai, Kivu, Tanganyika and other provinces of the Congo. And this requires an International Donor Conference in order to raise the $1.68 billion for the United Nations humanitarian response plan for the Congo.

This crisis kills every passing second. It kills women, children, and men who have fled the violence, hidden in the forest or even further away, and have nothing left when they return. This disaster could soon claim between one and two million lives if humanitarian aid is not funded. These dizzying figures are a poor reflection of the reality of a child or a woman taking their last breath. Not killed by violence, but by famine or disease.

The Congo crisis has been neglected. Today, it is the largest humanitarian crisis on the planet, and it is also the least funded, despite being classified at the maximum level of humanitarian emergency by the United Nations. The conflict between the Pygmies and Bantu in Tanganyika alone has already displaced 500,000 people – as many as the Rohingya crisis in Burma. According to UNOCHA, as well as those in Tanganyika, there are 1.5 million displaced in Kasai and more than 950,000 in Kivu and other provinces, making a total of 4.35 million people. In Uganda, 238,000 Congolese have sought shelter to escape the violence in Kivu, and a thousand more arrive each week. 7,000 people have taken refuge in Burundi and 33,000 in Angola, to name but a few. In fact, the total population displacement in the Congo today comes to more than that in Syria, Iraq and Yemen combined. How many of these 4.35 million displaced people are joining the migration routes from the Horn of Africa to the Libyan slave camps?

Whilst the conflict born in Kasai in August 2016 has killed 5,000 people so far, two million more could die of hunger. These populations survived the conflict, and returned at the end of the violence only to be unable to find food, water, toilets, clothes, roofs or shelter, work or school or any public services, and finding in their place villages burned to the ground, health centres looted, roads destroyed, agricultural plantations ravaged and cholera?

This is the plea for help from the churches where people are taking refuge that we have been proclaiming since the beginning of November 2017 on behalf of the Hope coordination, led by Cardinal Mosengwo for the Catholic Church and the Rev. Bokundoa, President of the Protestant Church, to the United Nations, the European Union, France and the entire international community. It is on behalf of this wounded, violated, displaced and abandoned population that we are calling for the urgent organisation of an International Donor Conference.

On 17 November 2016, the International Conference for the Central African Republic raised $2.2 billion. According to the United Nations, the humanitarian funding needs in the DRC for 2018 amount to $1.68 billion. The Congo, whose population is close to 90 million, twenty times more than the CAR and its 4.59 million people, is in great need of the same level of global solidarity.

Without an International Donor Conference, the United Nations humanitarian response plan for 2018 will not be even half funded. At the end of January 2018, it was 2% financed, and the plight of the people of the Congo forgotten by a planet in crisis. Yet, strong humanitarian action can still save millions of lives and give hope for a new future for the Congolese. By adding emergency aid to action for the post-conflict rehabilitation of socio-economic infrastructure, it will be possible to envisage progress towards sustainable development goals in a country of nearly 100 million people, where any progress can have a major impact. This is where the International Donor Conference for the Congo, which we call upon the international community to organise as quickly as possible, should lead us.

The DRC crisis can no longer be neglected: goo.gl/QtAawq

UNHCR Briefing Notes – Burundi risks to become a forgotten refugee crisis without support (06.02.2018)

Tanzania is hosting the largest number of Burundians with 254,000 refugees, while 89,000 are in Rwanda with another 44,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and some 40,000 in Uganda.

GENEVA, Switzerland, February 6, 2018 – Text presented by Catherine Wiesner, UNHCR’s Regional Coordinator for the Burundi situation – to whom quoted text may be attributed – to the Palais press this morning, before the regular press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva:

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, with its 26 other humanitarian partners, is today launching a funding appeal for US$391 million to support some 430,000 Burundian refugees during 2018.

We are urging donors to step up support for desperate refugees who struggle to survive in neighbouring countries as efforts are falling short of acceptable humanitarian standards. The international community must also stay engaged in the pursuit of a genuine and lasting resolution to the Burundi crisis.

Low levels of humanitarian funding for this crisis remains a great concern. Burundian refugees could get a mere 21 per cent of the required funds – making it the world’s least funded refugee response plan.

Our appeal, being presented today to donors in Geneva, aims to ensure the needs of Burundian refugees are not overlooked and the situation does not become a forgotten refugee crisis.

Since 2015, more than 400,000 refugees and asylum-seekers have fled the country, escaping human rights abuses, continued political uncertainty, and the related humanitarian crisis.

Refugee numbers are expected to increase by over 50,000 this year as regional efforts to resolve the political crisis in the country have not made significant progress.

The human rights situation inside Burundi remains worrying. Unless the political situation changes and socio-economic conditions improve, the outflow of Burundian refugees – mostly to neighbouring countries – is expected to continue in 2018, though at a lower level.

Tanzania is hosting the largest number of Burundians with 254,000 refugees, while 89,000 are in Rwanda with another 44,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and some 40,000 in Uganda. Smaller refugee numbers have also fled to Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and South Africa.

In 2017, over 61,000 refugees arrived in the neighbouring countries. Though numbers have dropped in comparison to 2016 (when some 123,000 had fled), thousands still kept crossing the borders to seek safety in the region.

With increasing humanitarian needs, dwindling resources did not allow assistance levels to reach acceptable standards throughout the region despite our efforts.

As the majority of refugees (85 per cent) live in refugee camps, underfunding has impacted all areas of life – including food cuts, dilapidated shelters, overcrowded classrooms, and limited capacity to respond to sexual and gender based violence.

Underfunding also severely affects our ability to invest in integrated social services and livelihood opportunities, limits support to environmental protection and restoration, and prevented us in 2017 from carrying out population verifications, providing documentation, and training government officials on refugee status determination as originally planned.

In the last few years, some Burundian refugees have also decided to return home, and are seeking to re-establish their lives in Burundian communities that are facing considerable economic pressures and food insecurity.

At this stage, UNHCR and partners are not promoting or encouraging refugee returns to Burundi. We are working with the relevant governments to assist those who indicate they have made a free and informed choice to return voluntarily, to do so in safety and dignity.

We are also reiterating our appeal to Burundi’s neighbours to continue to uphold their international responsibilities and commitments to receive asylum-seekers at their borders and offer protection to those who need it. UNHCR reminds States that refugees should not be forced to return to Burundi against their will.

RDC: Association Culturelle Ente av. Ituri – Communique Necrologique (04.02.2018)