As the summit on a new climate-related financial pact ended in Paris on Friday, Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, hosted a forum on the management of all kinds of disasters. For the Congolese Red Cross, this was an opportunity to advocate for its positioning in interventions in favor of populations in emergencies.
The participants in this Forum came from Brazzaville, but also from Kinshasa, on the other side of the Congo River.
Christian Sédar Ndinga, national president of the Congolese Red Cross, explains his objectives, “For us, it is a question of trying to launch an overall reflection on the improvement of the disaster management system in Congo. We also want to do a kind of advocacy for better positioning of the Congolese Red Cross within the disaster management system in Congo,” he explains.
Tornadoes, violent winds, siltation, or floods are all disasters linked to climate change that the Congo has experienced in recent years. To deal with this, the Red Cross has sometimes relied on volunteers from the affected communities.
Refugees and Population Movement
In addition to natural disasters related to climate change, the country has experienced other emergencies such as mass movements of nationals from neighboring countries. “There was also assistance from displaced populations from the DRC, at home in Ngabé (in the plateaus in the center of the country, Editor’s note) following the crisis that raged in Kwamouth in Bandundu. It was in 2022”, specifies Christian Sédar Ndinga.
More than 3,000 displaced people have found refuge in Congo-Brazzaville because of the Bandundu conflict. Overall, the country has 61,000 refugees from the DRC, CAR, and Rwanda in particular.