MONUSCO chief Bintou Keita issued several warnings regarding the security and humanitarian conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Wednesday, March 27th, at the United Nations. She informed the Security Council of the “significant advances” made by the M23 rebels in the country’s east, her first briefing after the December presidential election.
While she did not forget to commend the resumption of the Luanda process and the mediation of Angola between the DRC and Rwanda, Bintou Keita, head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the country (MONUSCO), was very clear before the Security Council: the M23 has never advanced so much in the east of the country, reported our correspondent at the UN, Carrie Nooten.
As for the Ituri region itself, insecurity remains dire. As a result, internally displaced persons number 800,000 more people in three months. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), a total of more than 7.1 million people are displaced.
Furthermore, as highlighted by Bintou Keita and reported in a UN statement, “for January 2024 alone, 10,400 cases of gender-based violence were reported across the country, a much larger increase than in previous years.”
One in four Congolese faces hunger
To stem this deterioration, President Félix Tshisekedi has announced a reform of the security and defense apparatus, and MONUSCO says it is ready to support the idea if it receives broad consensus. Indeed, the head of MONUSCO specified that military engagement “must go hand in hand with continued investment by the Congolese authorities in peace processes at regional, national, and local levels.”
But Bintou Keita still wanted to sound the alarm, as the humanitarian situation is deteriorating, and now one in four Congolese faces hunger and malnutrition, with 23.4 million people affected by food insecurity, making the DRC the most affected in the world by this problem, according to the United Nations.
However, the UN struggles to convince donors to finance the humanitarian plan for the Democratic Republic of Congo. The goal for 2024 was to raise $2.5 billion. To date, only 14% of this amount has been raised.