All posts tagged: DRC

The ‘man who repairs women’ on rape as a weapon and how the world forgot the DRC | Sexual violence

The ‘man who repairs women’ on rape as a weapon and how the world forgot the DRC | Sexual violence

Published by skeptic

Walking around a camp for displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo this year, the Nobel peace laureate Dr Denis Mukwege was filled with shame. Around him were women, many of them survivors of rape, living in destitution with no access to clean water or to any protection. The women had left their homes after fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 rebel group resumed in North Kivu province three years ago. Since then, aid agencies have reported an increase in sexual violence in the region. In April last year, the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said it was treating 48 new survivors a day among the displaced people living in camps around the city of Goma. “The situation of women and young girls in Goma is a stain on our humanity,” the renowned gynaecologist says. “I think we should all feel ashamed to see these women abandoned. [Sexual violence] is a red line … And if it is crossed, the world should react together and be able to say ‘no, this …

Hospitals in eastern DRC face vaccine shortages

Hospitals in eastern DRC face vaccine shortages

Published by skeptic

Goma —  In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, specifically in the Beni and Butembo region, parents are finding it hard getting vaccines for their children. Health care providers report that vaccines have been in short supply for several months, leaving thousands of children unvaccinated. Parents worried about their children’s health are calling on authorities to quickly resolve the situation. In the town of Butembo, vaccination programs have come to a stop. The head nurse of the Makasi health area, Kambale Wangahikya, confirms the absence of vaccines in certain areas of North Kivu province. He said they’re missing several vaccines, such as the one that fights pneumonia and helps children fight coughs, and also the vaccine that fights meningitis and mumps. He said that all children born and unborn are therefore still at risk. This situation creates frustrations for breastfeeding women. One mother, Kasoki, is worried because her infant son has not yet received the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis. She said she has a 4-month-old baby, but he’s having trouble getting BCG and other vaccines. …

New strain of mpox with ‘pandemic potential’ found in DRC mining town

New strain of mpox with ‘pandemic potential’ found in DRC mining town

Published by skeptic

Named “clade 1b”, the virus appears to be better at spreading between people, predominantly via sexual contact, and has mutations that evade detection by some existing tests. “Without intervention, this localised Kamituga outbreak harbors the potential to spread nationally and internationally,” say the authors who found 108 confirmed cases of the new strain. “Given the recent history of mpox outbreaks in DRC, we advocate for swift action by endemic countries and the international community to avert another global mpox outbreak”.        The outbreak, which is described as having “pandemic potential”, raises unnerving questions: not only has the virus never been reported in the region before, but – unusually – it is spreading in an urban hub and predominantly infecting adults, especially sex workers.  “We’re seeing evolutionary changes within the virus that’s suggestive of increased human transmission… and we’re seeing the changing demographics in this one specific region of Congo,” said Dr Jason Kindrachuk, an associate professor in infectious disease at the University of Manitoba in Canada and co-author of the paper. “This is very important, because …

Oxfordshire’s Westminster Group to help upgrade security at DRC airports

Oxfordshire’s Westminster Group to help upgrade security at DRC airports

Published by skeptic

Westminster Group has secured a 10-plus-year contract to provide security services for five airports in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Oxfordshire firm officially signed off during last week’s UK–DRC Trade and Investment Mission, at a formal ceremony in the capital Kinshasa attended by board representatives of both Westminster and the airport authority La Regie Des Voies Aeriennes (RVA). Their contract is for an initial period of 10 years, with a five-year renewal thereafter. It will see the group providing comprehensive ground security operations, initially at four international airports and one national airport in the DRC. Westminster will provide the investment and expertise required to upgrade security at the airports. This not only includes the provision of advanced detection, surveillance, and screening equipment, but also the maintenance, training and various support services required to ensure DRC’s airport security is run to the highest international standards. The plan is to help authorities in the DRC develop and maintain world-class airport security services, opening up the potential for growth in air traffic by attracting new …

Eastern DRC ‘at breaking point’ as security, humanitarian crises worsen | Armed Groups News

Eastern DRC ‘at breaking point’ as security, humanitarian crises worsen | Armed Groups News

Published by Sam

War is on the doorstep of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Goma city and the region is at breaking point, activists and aid workers have said, as the United Nations sounds an alarm over the situation in the Central African country. “One Congolese person out of four faces hunger and malnutrition,” Bintou Keita, the head of the UN’s DRC peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, told the UN Security Council this week, warning of a rapidly deteriorating security situation and a humanitarian crisis reaching near catastrophic levels. “More than 7.1 million people have been displaced in the country. That is 800,000 people more since my last briefing three months ago,” she said. Heavy fighting between the Congolese army and armed group M23 has intensified in the eastern part of the country since February, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes as the rebels make territorial gains. The armed group “is making significant advances and expanding its territory to unprecedented levels”, Keita said at the UN on Wednesday. This comes as fierce battles between the …

Security in Eastern Congo Deteriorating, Rebel Group Expanding Territory

Security in Eastern Congo Deteriorating, Rebel Group Expanding Territory

Published by skeptic

UNITED NATIONS —  Security in Congo’s mineral-rich east has deteriorated since recent elections, with a rebel group allegedly linked to neighboring Rwanda making “significant advances and expanding its territory,” the U.N. special envoy for the conflict-wracked African nation said Wednesday. Bintou Keita told the U.N. Security Council this has created “an even more disastrous humanitarian situation, with internal displacement reaching unparalleled numbers.” Last month, the United States told Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo that they “must walk back from the brink of war,” the sharpest warning yet of a looming conflict. U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood again condemned “the aggressive military incursion” into eastern Congo by the M23 rebel group and the Rwandan Defense Force and attacks including on U.N. peacekeepers. He called on the leaders of Rwanda and Congo “to make the decision to pursue peace — for the sake of their people, the region and the world.” Wood described M23 as “a group which has perpetrated appalling human rights abuses against civilians, including sexual and gender-based violence.” He called the international …

Why Aid Groups Are Warning of New Humanitarian Crisis in Eastern DR Congo

Why Aid Groups Are Warning of New Humanitarian Crisis in Eastern DR Congo

Published by skeptic

CAPE TOWN, South Africa —  Aid organizations fear a new humanitarian crisis in the restive eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the armed rebel group M23 is in the midst of a new advance that threatens to cut off a major city and leave millions of people struggling for food and medical help. Eastern Congo has been beset by conflict for years, with M23 among more than 100 armed groups vying for a foothold in the mineral-rich area near the border with Rwanda. Some have been accused of carrying out mass killings. There’s been an upsurge in fighting in recent weeks between M23 rebels and Congo army forces, and it comes as the United Nations plans to withdraw peacekeepers from the region by the end of the year. Tensions are also rising between Congo and Rwanda, with them blaming each other for supporting various armed groups. Congo accuses Rwanda of backing M23. This weekend, the U.S. State Department condemned what it called the “worsening violence.” A group of aid agencies has estimated …

‘I feel my heart breaking into a thousand pieces’: Goma fills with refugees trying to flee fighting in DRC | Global development

‘I feel my heart breaking into a thousand pieces’: Goma fills with refugees trying to flee fighting in DRC | Global development

Published by skeptic

The doctors and nurses at Ndosho hospital in Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are working round the clock with a stream of injured people arriving each day. People trying to escape the fighting between the rebel militia group M23 and government forces have been arriving in the regional capital of North Kivu province in their thousands over the past 10 days. Moustapha Ngabo, 36, is standing outside a ward, watching anxiously as doctors examine his two-year-old daughter. His shirt is splattered with her blood. “There was fighting between the M23 and the army in the hills,” he says. “We took nothing with us as we left.” Ngabo and his family have been displaced twice. First, they left their home village in the Masisi region of North Kivu to take refuge in Saké, a town about 15 miles from Goma. On 13 February, with rebels closing in and shells falling on the town, Ngabo and his wife made the decision to take their two children and run again. But they hadn’t made it …

Mini-Summit Discusses Peace Efforts for East Democratic Republic of Congo

Mini-Summit Discusses Peace Efforts for East Democratic Republic of Congo

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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia —  Angolan President Joao Lourenco hosted a mini-summit in Addis Ababa on Friday in a bid to revive peace efforts for the violence-wracked eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The meeting, on the eve of a two-day AU summit in the Ethiopian capital, follows an escalation of fighting in the region in recent days. Diplomatic efforts have so far failed to quell the conflict between the M23 rebel group and the Congolese army in the mineral-rich east of the vast central African nation. DRC President Felix Tshisekedi was among those taking part in Friday’s closed-door meeting, his office said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. “This mini-summit discussed, among other things, the return to a constructive and reconciliatory dialogue between the DRC and Rwanda, the immediate cessation of hostilities, the immediate withdrawal of the M23 from occupied areas and the launch of a process to contain this movement,” the presidency said. Kinshasa, along with the United Nations and Western countries, accuses DR Congo’s much smaller neighbor Rwanda of backing the rebels, a …