Thursday, October 31, 2024
Rome, Italy

Nearly a quarter of the inhabitants of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where millions of people are displaced, are in a situation of acute hunger, the UN has alerted in a report published on Monday, October 28, 2024.
Some 25.6 million people are currently facing acute food insecurity, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, produced by several NGOs and UN agencies.
According to this classification, this means that their lives or livelihoods are threatened in the short term due to a lack of sufficient food.
“Acute food insecurity results from a combination of factors, including conflict, soaring food prices and transport costs, as well as the prolonged effects of various epidemics such as measles, cholera, malaria or, more recently, mpox”, says the IPC.
Natural disasters such as floods have worsened the situation in the areas concerned, according to the report, which covers the period July-December 2024.

Among the obstacles to food production, the report also points to diseases that have affected crops, the difficulty for farmers to invest, and the poor state of roads. Access to drinking water remains a “concern” throughout the country.
“Armed violence and competition for resources have caused massive damage to rural livelihoods and infrastructure, disrupting essential agricultural production”, stresses Rein Paulsen, Director of the Emergencies and Resilience Office of the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Displaced populations in northeastern DRC are particularly hard hit, victims of persistent insecurity since the resurgence of the M23 at the end of 2021.
The provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu are home to “more than 80%” of the displaced population, according to the IPC. The country has 6.4 million displaced persons, according to the latest figures published by the UNHCR in September.
The resurgence of the M23 has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in North Kivu, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that has been virtually permanent in this region of eastern DRC for almost 30 years.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are crammed into camps and makeshift shelters on the outskirts of Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu.
IPC projections show that national food insecurity in 2025 should remain at the same level as in 2024, already similar to that of 2023.

However, the FAO is concerned about a worsening security situation following the disengagement of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Monusco) from South Kivu on June 30.
Monusco’s peacekeepers are also due to withdraw from North Kivu and Ituri, which “feeds similar fears” for the report’s authors.
In the west and northeast of the country, inter-community conflicts over land have forced thousands of people to abandon their villages and fields, leaving them without any means of subsistence.

Humaniterre with AFP