The Difficulties of Distributing Aid in Congo

by Michael Kleinman

Published November 15, 2008 @ 11:55AM PST

[Food distributions in Kibati and Mugunga camps last week - Footage from the World Food Program]

In most of the posts I've written on Congo (see here), there's common refrain - that aid workers are struggling to reach hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the fighting.  The UN recently warned of "humanitarian black holes" in areas devastated by the recent fighting.  (For a map of the area, see here.)

Part of the reason humanitarian access has proven so difficult are attacks and threats against aid workers.  For instance, early in the fighting the UN tried to evacuate aid workers from around Rutshuru, north of Goma.  The convoy was soon attacked and the peacekeepers fled, at which point the aid workers tried to take refuge in a nearby compound.

Staff from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) described what happened next:

"After two and a half hours the armed men used the butts of their guns to break down the door. Two or three of them entered, screaming in the local dialect. They were most likely demanding money and other valuables such as laptops and cell phones.

This part of the attack is too traumatic to recount in detail. Armed men were pushing guns against us, touching women inappropriately, assaulting men and women, screaming, taking grenades out and threatening to blow up our room. They made one of the men strip down. They shot at the feet of one of our colleagues from UNHCR. We all thought at one point that we might be raped or killed."

Furthermore, it's not enough simply to show up in an area and begin distributing supplies - without proper assessments and planning, aid operations risk causing more harm than good.  According to Marcus Prior of the World Food Program (WFP):

"If we just turn up and dump food there will be a total free-for-all where there's a real risk of people getting injured or even killed, and the food would not go to the people who need it most. In any situation such as this, it is the weakest and most vulnerable who will be the last to get their hands on the food."

The post below takes a more in-more depth look at the challenges of delivering aid in both Government and rebel-controlled areas.  For the most recent OCHA Humanitarian Situation Update (November 13th), see here.

Kibati Camp - Delivering Aid on the Frontlines

[Continued after the jump]

Over 65,000 people have sought refuge in the two camps at Kibati, just a few miles north of Goma.  The camps lay almost directly on the frontline between rebel forces and the Congolese Army.  According to the BBC:

"The camp is overwhelmed with chaotic humanity...this vast camp of flimsy plastic and banana-leaf shelters is sandwiched between the UN and the areas the rebels control. If fighting resumes, Kibati will be the front line - a prospect that would almost certainly mean horrific civilian casualties."

Gina Bramucci with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has described what it's like trying to distribute supplies in Kibati - the account below is from November 10th:

"Sometime after midday, in the space of a few seconds, civilians abandoned the distribution grounds and started running in all directions. Mothers grabbed for the hands of young children, men rushed to pack belongings, the elderly moved as quickly as they could, a look of untold weariness on their faces. I paused in the commotion with other IRC staff and finally heard what was causing the panic - gunfire, steady and relatively close...

What had been just moments before a camp crowded with civilians rapidly emptied. The mobility of these families was testimony to how well-practiced they have become with the patterns of war - combat and danger, fear and escape, false and transitory stability, until violence approaches once again.

Plastic sheeting was pulled off shelters and turned into an impromptu bag to fit all belongings. Those families with goats tethered them together and pulled them behind. Babies who had been sitting in the middle of crowded areas were swept up and tied to mothers‚ backs in one swift, adept move."

(A few days later, IRC returned to the camp and was able to complete the distribution - for her account, see here.)

That said, aid agencies have been able to organize some distributions around Goma - for instance, last week the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was able to distribute food in Kibati. (For more details about ongoing aid activities in Kibati, see here.)

Given the location of the camps so close to the frontlines, however, the UN and its NGO partners have decided to transfer the 65,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) to a new, safer location west of Goma.  The transfer will start early next week.

Rutshuru and Kiwanja - Trying to Get Aid into Rebel-Controlled Areas

Rutshuru and Kiwanja lay around 85 kilometers north of Goma, in rebel-controlled territory.  Most aid agencies - with the exception of Medecins Sans Frontieres - evacuated when fighting swept over the area in late October.

(The account above of the attack on the humanitarian convoy occured when the UN tried to evacuate aid workers from Rutshuru.)

To make matters even worse, soon after the rebels captured the area they destroyed the three displaced person camps around Rutshuru, forcing at least 50,000 people to flee.  As one field officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported at the time: "All the camps are empty. They have all left. All the shelters have been destroyed ... nothing remains."

Then, last week, thousands of people sought refuge at a UN base during renewed fighting near Kiwanja, only to have the rebels force them to leave and return to their villages.  (For a more detailed account of rebel war crimes around Kiwanja, see this recent post by World is Witness.)

As one Congolese farmer in Kiwanja described the situation:

"We are still too afraid to go to the fields to find food but now the small amounts which were on sale in the market are running out and are very expensive.  Since the rebels came, we have seen no help from outsiders and now the situation is becoming very bad."

Malnutrition rates around Rutshuru and Kiwanja have soared to almost double the emergency threshold.  According to a WFP spokesman:

"Rutshuru has had some of the highest malnutrition rates, up to 17.5 percent global acute malnutrition. The emergency (level) is 10 percent. There were at least 60,000 displaced people living in and around Rutshuru town alone who were almost completely dependent on outside assistance for their food needs and we need to make sure that we reach them as a matter of urgency."

It's only in the past few days that aid agencies have finally been able to deliver food to the area.  On Friday a WFP convoy of twelve trucks carrying 100 tons of food arrived in Rutshuru - 12,000 people were scheduled to receive rations yesterday alone.

Random quote: "I cannot rest from travel / I will drink / Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd / Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those / That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when / Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades / Vest the dim sea: I am become a name" (Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses)