{"id":78132,"date":"2021-11-26T02:00:18","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T00:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/central-africa\/dr-congo\/surge-in-violence-leaves-thousands-in-drc-in-desperate-need-of-assistance\/"},"modified":"2021-11-26T02:00:18","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T00:00:18","slug":"surge-in-violence-leaves-thousands-in-drc-in-desperate-need-of-assistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/central-africa\/dr-congo\/surge-in-violence-leaves-thousands-in-drc-in-desperate-need-of-assistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Surge in violence leaves thousands in DRC in desperate need of assistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A new wave of violence\u00a0in Ituri province in eastern DR Congo has forced aid organisations to reduce or suspend their activities, leaving thousands of families without life-saving humanitarian support, including food assistance, education and health services.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Save the Children, the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) are among the organisations that have had to temporarily reduce or suspend activities since fighting escalated at the weekend.\u00a0More than 320,000 people in Djugu territory are now at risk of being cut off from humanitarian assistance, warn the three organisations.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0reduction and\u00a0suspension of\u00a0activities\u00a0come\u00a0at a time when the country\u00a0is\u00a0facing\u00a0the world\u2019s largest hunger crisis this century. In\u00a0Ituri\u00a0province\u00a0alone,\u00a0over\u00a0half of the\u00a0population \u2013 nearly\u00a03 million people\u00a0\u2013 are facing\u00a0extreme\u00a0levels of hunger. Of all the provinces in DRC,\u00a0Ituri\u00a0has the largest\u00a0number of people facing extreme hunger, and\u00a0nutrition and health actors like Save the Children have now lost access.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlready 1.5 million people\u00a0are\u00a0already\u00a0displaced in\u00a0Ituri, half of them children.\u00a0They\u00a0are\u00a0relying on humanitarian assistance to survive.\u00a0The\u00a0disruption\u00a0of access\u00a0to food, water,\u00a0shelter,\u00a0healthcare and protection services\u00a0will\u00a0only\u00a0push\u00a0these\u00a0extremely vulnerable populations\u00a0further towards the abyss,\u201d said Caitlin Brady, NRC\u2019s Country Director.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Many armed actors in DRC have been accused of grave violations of child rights in conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren and women are\u00a0paying the highest price in conflicts.\u00a0Hospitals have been attacked, denying\u00a0pregnant women and hungry children access to health care; schools have been attacked, denying children the right to education; children are likely to be more and more recruited\u00a0to armed groups and\u00a0even\u00a0killed in the violence. In our ongoing programmes in the area, for weeks now, more than 85,000 children have been left behind due to lack of access in their communities or health centres that used to care for them,\u201d said Save the Children\u2019s Country Director\u00a0Amavi\u00a0Akpamagbo.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen and children face extreme levels\u00a0of\u00a0physical and sexual violence\u00a0at the hands of armed actors. We have\u00a0programming to protect these\u00a0groups\u00a0but\u00a0it\u2019s increasingly hard to safely access them. We must see an end to abuses and impunity,\u201d\u00a0said Martine Villeneuve, Country Director for Danish Refugee Council.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The three organisations\u00a0call on all parties to the conflict to safeguard civilians\u2019 lives and dignity and allow\u00a0safe,\u00a0principled humanitarian access\u00a0to all affected\u00a0populations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Save the Children.<\/i><\/p>\n

Source<\/a>
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South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Central Africa Democratic Republic of Congo<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Download logo A new wave of violence\u00a0in Ituri province in eastern DR Congo has forced aid organisations to reduce or suspend their activities, leaving thousands of families without life-saving humanitarian support, including food assistance, education and health services. Save the Children, the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) are among the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":78133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/db35f15d5dc659d.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[258,256,9651,4696,281,17200,4691,450,279,280,9647,257,254,10716,9216,2148],"class_list":["post-78132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dr-congo","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-assistance","tag-central-africa","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo","tag-desperate","tag-dr-congo","tag-dr-congo-news","tag-drc","tag-drc-news","tag-leaves","tag-news","tag-south-africa-today","tag-surge","tag-thousands","tag-violence"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/db35f15d5dc659d.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}