According to a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification IPC report, a record 27 million Congolese – roughly a quarter of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) population – are facing hunger, with 860,000 children under five acutely malnourished. The DRC is home to more starving people than any other country in the world. This could have been prevented.
In 2017, 7.7 million people were on the verge. Then the UN said the crisis was on the scale of Syria and Yemen.
Earlier this year, the World Food Programme said 22 million Congolese were close to starvation, surpassing Yemen to become the world’s biggest and fastest-deteriorating food crisis.
In a little more than nine months, an additional 5 million Congolese have become food insecure.
For the first time, there are similar levels of hunger in towns and cities as remote rural areas.
Food prices spiral upwards and poverty deepens in a country where the most recent figures show 73% of the population live on less than $1.90 (£1.40) a day, creating food insecurity and pushing a country already on the edge of crisis, off the cliff.
The forecast remains bleak through 2022 – suggesting that the worst is yet to come.
Conflict has pushed things close to breaking point; with more than 40 local and foreign militia gangs fighting for control of minerals that make mobile phones and “green’” cars.
The problem has worsened since Tshisekedi took office in 2019 because not only has he refused to take action against the war criminals responsible for the violence and the displacement of more than 5.5 million Congolese people, which fuels the hunger, he has promoted them.
Tshisekedi has rewarded and promoted army officers under UN, US and EU sanctions for human rights violations including Gen Gabriel Amisi – who a 2012 UN report accused of running a network supplying arms to rebel groups – and Gen Muhindo Akili Mundos, under UN sanctions for his part in organising and carrying out civilian massacres. According to a 2015 UN report, not a single individual under Akili has been prosecuted for civilian deaths.
Tshisekedi has promoted other known human rights violators labelled the “red generals” by senior UN officials, including Fall Sikabwe Asinda, Thierry Ilunga Kibambi and Egide Ngoy. In August, Tshisekedi appointed another former rebel leader Tommy Tambwe. Less than three months later, Tambwe’s militia gang M23 attacked Bukavu.
How can you protect civilians from violence if the very men who caused it are in power?
This culture of impunity fuels insecurity and violence, which forces people off their land, closes markets, leads to loss of jobs and income and school dropouts.
Every day this goes on, more and more Congolese are killed, raped, displaced and pushed into poverty. The last mortality report published by the International Rescue Committee was in 2008 and placed the death toll at more than 5.4 million, since 1998, with 45,000 dying every month due to the violence, disease and famine that follow it.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is asking for $65m (£48m) to help 1.1 million of the most vulnerable Congolese who cannot survive without food assistance, including mothers who are too malnourished to breastfeed their babies.
So far only $4.5m (£3.3m) has been raised, leaving countless men, women and children facing desperate choices: should they join one of the many militia gangs to access their land so they don’t starve – compounding the violence – or become displaced, walking vast distances in search of security?
As millions face famine #CongoIsStarving is calling on Joe Biden to help | Vava Tampa | The Guardian
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