DRODRO, Democratic Republic of Congo — Rehema Dive can’t recall how many times the militia attacked her village in 2018 before she finally decided to flee. All she remembers are the 17 mutilated bodies, her uncle among them, who were killed in the forest during the final assault as they tried to escape.
After the Coopérative pour le développement du Congo, or CODECO — a loose association of various ethnic Lendu militia groups — pillaged her town in DRC’s conflict-ridden Ituri province, Dive fled to Drodro village where she sheltered until late last year. But then CODECO returned and continued massacring. Now the 30-year-old sits in Rho displacement camp in Djugu territory in Ituri fearing she’ll have to leave once again.
“I’m afraid,” said Dive cradling her 3 1/2-year-old son in her lap. “If the fighting comes here and if by chance we survive, we’ll have to flee,” she said.
Since November, violence has resurged in Djugu territory in central Ituri, where fighting between armed groups drawing from ethnic Lendu and Hema communities has been raging for five years. The violence has displaced tens of thousands and is fueling a dire humanitarian crisis that’s been met with an inadequate humanitarian response, aid workers and locals said. More than 1.5 million people are displaced within Ituri, the majority of them — nearly 690,000 — are in Djugu, the United Nations said.
The spike in violence has pushed more than 40,000 people into Rho camp since November, increasing the population more than threefold, according to the U.N. Displaced people in the camp and the surrounding villages said they feel “forgotten” by the government and the international community — which is dealing with a plethora of conflicts in eastern DRC, the part of the country with more than 120 armed groups — as they face Africa’s largest internal displacement crisis with 5.6 million people forced from their homes.
Some locals feel the violence in Ituri is given less attention because it is regarded as being intercommunal, rather than between groups connected to external influences, such as the March 23 Movement, or M23, rebel group, which had been dormant for nearly a decade and has resurfaced with heavy backing from Rwanda, or the Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamist rebel group with links to Uganda, both of which operate in neighboring North Kivu province.
Forty-two aid groups operate in Ituri compared with 79 in North Kivu, according to statistics from the U.N. One aid worker who was not authorized to speak to the media said that donor funding wasn’t adequate compared to the immense recurring needs in the province and is sometimes — at least perceived as — redirected to “more eye-catching crises that also draw [geo]political attention.” Additionally, fewer aid groups might choose to operate in Ituri due to higher complexity in terms of security and access, he said.
Rights groups said the army has diverted resources from Ituri to North Kivu, which has created a security vacuum making it easier for armed groups to escalate attacks.
“When the army left Ituri the first consequence was that the armed groups took control of all the areas where the [army] used to control,” said Dieudonné Lossa Dhekana, provincial coordinator for the Société Civile Forces Vives de L’Ituri, an umbrella organization of civil society groups. “Now they are looting, killing people and raping women.”
For the first time since 2020, more civilians have been killed in Ituri than in North Kivu, according to The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The number of civilians killed in Ituri increased by more than 35% from last year until the end of September this year — from 910 to 1,244 — according to data collected by ACLED. Less than 850 civilians have died in North Kivu as of September.
The vicious cycle of attacks and continuous displacement of people is making it hard for humanitarians to reach communities, resulting in some people in rural villages dying from lack of food and medical attention, aid workers said.
“The situation for the displaced, and civilians in general, in Djugu, is catastrophic; there is widespread hunger, and many communities have experienced terrible atrocities.”
— Caitlin Brady, country director for Democratic Republic of Congo, Norwegian Refugee CouncilFrom December to August, six children died from malnutrition in Gokpa village outside of Drodro and one woman died during childbirth, Johan Brieussel, deputy head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières in Congo said. During that time the MSF team — one of few with a permanent presence in Drodro — couldn’t go to the area and suspended operations, he said. The team is still only traveling there a fraction of how often it used to.
During a trip to Rho camp in September, residents told Devex they hadn’t received food aid from the international community since June and before this year, they went two years without receiving any food assistance from humanitarians. The scarce, meager government rations they received were not enough to feed a family, they said. Camp residents said they can’t travel more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) outside the site to cultivate for fear of running into armed groups.
“People whose farms are close can access them but others can’t because armed groups will kill you,” said Heritier Asimwe, a community leader in Rho.
Shelley Thakral, head of communications for the World Food Programme for Congo told Devex that it paused its general cash distribution program in Rho in June “due to rising unrest and insecurity issues.” The agency will continue to monitor and assess the situation as security remains a huge concern, she said.
Before 2017, Ituri province was peaceful enough that the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, had plans to leave the province, according to a U.N. official. It’s unclear what triggered the fighting five years ago, but since then a new wave of violence has revived historic intercommunal tensions between CODECO and Zaire, the latter, a mainly Hema-led self-defense group.
While both groups have been accused of committing human rights abuses, CODECO is considered to be particularly brutal, including launching attacks on displacement sites,
killing children, and gang-raping women, according to the United Nations Group of Experts report. In November and February, it attacked several displacement camps in Djugu killing at least 118 people, said the report.
Aid groups said the violence isn’t only making it challenging to reach communities but the constant displacement makes it hard to set up a sustainable response. “Every three to four months, there are attacks and displacement, which means we have to start over,” said one international aid worker in Ituri who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation.
When families become displaced they lose most of their belongings and access to their land, which they depend on for survival. In the current context, it is almost impossible for aid groups to help them rebuild their lives in a sustainable way, said the aid worker.
Some members of the Lendu community accuse aid groups of giving more attention to the Hema, the latter who tend to shelter in displacement camps whereas displaced Lendu largely stay in houses with the host community. Humanitarians said they try to disperse aid equally, but that people in displacement sites are generally more in need and that it’s also easier to access them.
During recent months some 30,000 people have left Rho camp to try and return to their communities, aid groups say. But many still sleep in the site at night or return for several days or weeks when there’s a flare in violence. Many people who have left the camp have no home to return to.
“People outside the camps need assistance as well because their houses were burned down and they have nowhere to live,” said Jean Batiste, a local whose house was destroyed during fighting in 2019. After leaving Rho earlier this year, he now lives with his five children in an abandoned house in the village because he can’t afford to fix his home, he said. In July an organization registered people who had left the camp but he said they haven’t returned since.
When violence was at its peak, most aid groups suspended operations, some are starting up again. The Norwegian Refugee Council, which halted activities due to fighting from November until January, has helped 55,000 people who have returned to Djugu since April with cash, to pay for goods in the market, as well as shelter, water, and access to education, said Caitlin Brady, country director for NRC in DRC.
But without a negotiated peace, and a strong commitment from DRC authorities and the international community, the protection of civilians and their human rights are at risk, she said. “The situation for the displaced, and civilians in general, in Djugu, is catastrophic; there is widespread hunger, and many communities have experienced terrible atrocities,” Brady said.
In June, some armed groups agreed to a unilateral ceasefire in preparation for a nationwide demobilization program launched earlier this year. While it has provided communities with a bit of respite, with less attacks and freer movement along the roads, aid groups and locals worry it won’t last, especially if the demobilization program doesn’t start soon, leaving armed groups idle and in need of money.
Many militia abiding by the agreement have now come in from the bush and are taxing people at checkpoints along the road and in the market, locals said. While Devex was driving from Drodro to Ituri’s capital, Bunia, the driver had to pay CODECO fighters a roadside tax.
There are also concerns that fighting from ADF — the Islamist rebel group — which has spilled over from North Kivu into southern Ituri, could eventually impact Djugu in the province’s center. ADF has already cut off access routes to the main town of Mambasa creating a dire humanitarian situation, aid groups said. If the violence spreads within the province it could make it harder to get aid to Drodro, they said.
Meanwhile, displaced people in Djugu said they are fed up with feeling ignored. “Old people are dying, they don’t have the means to stay here,” said Enok Bubu, a 45-year-old resident of Rho. “The government knows there’s a camp here and has not supported it. We feel abandoned,” he said.
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