Facts
A total of
592,420
people in need received our assistance in 2017.
Humanitarian overview
The population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has continued to endure humanitarian crises throughout the end of 2018. The continuation and evolution of the Ebola crisis in large cities like Beni and Butembo coupled with existing humanitarian needs in the Upper North Kivu has continued to strain thin financial and human resources. By year’s end, the Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) was only 45 per cent funded, one of the lowest totals of any humanitarian crisis on the planet.
While crises in the Greater Kasai Region and Tanganyika have shown some signs of waning, those who were displaced in these provinces face the challenge of rebuilding their lives after having returned to less than they had before. A new crisis emerged just ahead of the December 2018 Presidential Election in the Western Congo territory of Yumbi, where close to 900 people were killed during interethnic clashes. Those same clashes displaced between 20,000 and 30,000 people and caused 16,000 to seek refuge in neighbouring Republic of Congo.
People we helped in DR Congo in 2017
NRC's operation
The crisis in DR Congo receives little international attention and is extremely underfunded. As a result, organisations, including our team, struggle to support people affected by the violence. In 2018, our staff have been present in all of the largest conflict areas: North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri, Kasai, and Tanganyika. The programme is focusing on integrated response all along the displacement cycle, with a large cash response in emergency, and a multisectoral response in search of a durable solution.
Education
We provide quality education in safe and protected environments. Our education activities:
- provide accelerated learning opportunities to allow out-of-school children to catch up with their peers and reintegrate into the formal school system
- protect children and youth both physically and psychologically to create a sense of normalcy and routine
- train teachers, education authorities and other education stakeholders on psychosocial support, peace education, class management, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse, and good governance in school management
- support the rehabilitation and construction of classrooms
- provide youth with education to enhance their livelihood skills and guide them towards a profession
Information, counselling and legal assistance (ICLA)
We support people affected by displacement and enable them to exercise and enjoy their housing, land and property rights. Our teams:
- provide information, counselling, trainings and legal assistance services so that people can learn about, and claim, their housing, land and property rights
- support land conflicts resolution initiatives
- increase land tenure security
- help people obtain legal documentation, particularly birth and marriage certificates
- increase protection of women's housing, land and property rights
- ensure that men and women have equal access to land
- increase humanitarian actors on housing, land and property issues
- contribute to the advocacy for customary land securisation
- facilitate temporary access to land for internally displaced people
- ensure that the people we provide shelter for also enjoy the rights they are entitled to
Livelihoods and food security
Our livelihood and food security teams support displaced people with food assistance. Our food security teams offer:
- food and household items for people in acute need of food
- agricultural kits in order to restore most vulnerable households’ resilience capacities
- assistance on land tenure for internally displaced people and returnees, in close collaboration with our ICLA teams
- training sessions on livelihood opportunities and productivity to ensure that people better adapt and withstand future shocks and crises
- support to small breeding activities, like guinea pigs, chicken and rabbits
- various Income Generating Activities (IGA) accompanied with business management training
- to support vulnerable households through unconditional and unrestricted cash grants in order for them to meet their basics needs, other than food
Shelter and settlements
So far this year, our shelter teams have:
- established partnerships with donors to strengthen our shelter programmes, like UNHCR and OFDA
- sought to define and propose durable solutions to households in provinces where displacement camps are closing down
- provided cash and technical expertise for shelter to families who return home
- assessed needs of health centres in conflict areas
- built and rehabilitated classrooms and water points for displaced children
- collaborated with our ICLA team to ensure that every household's property rights are respected and upheld
- In addition to traditional food assistance, NRC teams provide:
- Non-food items (NFIs) through cash distribution and/or markets fairs (using e-voucher technology) for displaced and conflict-affected populations. We also provide sensitisation activities on the proper usage of NFIs and we follow-up after distributions to evaluate the impact of our intervention
Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) promotion
Our WASH teams:
- rehabilitate damaged and weak water facilities
- construct and repair water points and latrines
- spread knowledge about safe hygiene practices to people affected by displacement, both in communities and schools
- bring about spontaneous and long-term changes to sanitation practices through the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach to open defecation
- distribute hygiene kits and campaign to promote the use of safe water containers for both water transportation and storage
Humanitarian mediation and protection
Our Humanitarian Mediation and Protection projects seek to contribute to improved protection of civilians through humanitarian mediation processes. We aim to achieve conflict prevention and mitigation. The activities include:
- undertaking conflict sensitive, gender and protection analyses
- supporting dialogue processes and humanitarian mediation processes
- training of national and international actors working to protect civilians
About NRC in (country)
- Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DEVCO/EuropeAid)
- Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO)
- SIDA
- Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (NMFA)
- Education Cannot Wait (ECW)
- Norwegian Agency for Development cooperation (Norad)
- Global Affairs Canada (GAC)
- Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)
- United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
- United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
- United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
- Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
