DRC: UN WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME BEGINS EMERGENCY AIRLIFT TO FEED 100,00 DISPLACED BY FIGHTING IN EASTERN CONGO

Record ID: 645033

  • Title: DRC: UN WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME BEGINS EMERGENCY AIRLIFT TO FEED 100,00 DISPLACED BY FIGHTING IN EASTERN CONGO
  • Date: 27th January 2003
  • Summary: REFUGEES WALKING IN STREET
  • Embargoed: 11th February 2003 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: KASESE, UGANDA AND BUNIA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
  • Country: Congo, Democratic Republic of
  • Topics: Conflict,Disasters,Quirky,Social Services / Welfare
  • Reuters ID: LVA99O319O2T32GH5PM4FMHG9XVS
  • Story Text: The United Nations World Food Programme has begun an emergency airlift operation to feed over a 100,000 people displaced by fighting in Eastern Congo. In spite of a recent peace deal: rebel groups, ethnic militias, and the Ugandan army are sticking to their guns.
    A truck laden with sacks of relief food trundles up to the cargo bay of a Buffalo plane waiting on a desolate airstrip in Kasese, Uganda.
    Labourers work feverishly to load up the food, thousands of people are waiting desperately for their rations across the border in the town of Bunia, situated in the Democratic Republic of Congo's war-ravaged north-eastern region.
    It's all part of an emergency operation funded and run by the United Nations World Food Programme, the European Commission and the NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) German Agro Action.
    They plan to airlift food to more than 115,00 people displaced by fractional fighting in the areas surrounding Bunia.
    "Unfortunately, because of the problem of security people are no longer able to look after their farms," says Agro Action Allemande Logistician Radi Sterz.
    But the World Food Programme cannot afford to run this operation for more than a month. Yet the region's infrastructure has been ravaged by years of conflict and roads are impossible to ride as well as dangerous.
    Currently, Hema and Lendu ethnic groups living in the Ituri province are locked in fighting.
    This latest conflict has forced scores of people, mostly women and children, out of their homes.
    Many of them have fled to Bunia.
    Unlike many Lossinu Najabu and his family got away without suffering either injuries or loss.
    But they were scared.
    "We were chased away. Our enemies burnt our house. We had our house and a goat. They looted and burnt down everything.(Question: "Who are your enemies?") Our Lendu brothers," says Lossinu Najabu an ethnic Hema.
    They now depend entirely on food handouts and a fragile security provided by the Ugandan troops still present in Bunia.
    At the height of the Congolese war which broke out in 1998, there were six foreign armies operating in the vast central African country.
    The messy conflict is estimated to have claimed at least two million lives. Although a peace deal has now been signed and foreign troops have left Congo, it appears Ugandans are settled in Bunia.
    But even though Uganda is accused of playing up ethnic rivalries and rebel faction alliances to their advantage, not everyone is eager to see the Ugandans leave.
    "The Ugandans must not leave until Joseph Kabila's government takes over, but not now. (Question: "If they leave now, what do you fear will happen":) If the Ugandans leave we will be finished. Everything will be destroyed, the militias will exterminate us all," says Joseph Lago, a Lendu man.
    Fear continues to eat away at the people who live in this region of Congo after they witnessed and survived some of the worst atrocities on the continent and many have lost faith that peace will ever reign here.
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