{"id":209642,"date":"2021-11-25T16:21:57","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T14:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-newsroom.com\/press\/thousands-of-people-in-dr-congo-are-in-desperate-need-of-humanitarian-assistance-amid-a-new-surge-of-violence?lang=en"},"modified":"2021-11-25T16:21:57","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T14:21:57","slug":"thousands-of-people-in-dr-congo-are-in-desperate-need-of-humanitarian-assistance-amid-a-new-surge-of-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/thousands-of-people-in-dr-congo-are-in-desperate-need-of-humanitarian-assistance-amid-a-new-surge-of-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of people in DR Congo are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance amid a new surge of violence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-newsroom.com\/files\/large\/21d00707ede929b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.africa-newsroom.com\/files\/large\/21d00707ede929b\" alt=\"Norwegian Refugee Council\" style=\"max-width:500px\" \/><\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-newsroom.com\/files\/download\/21d00707ede929b\">Download logo<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new wave of violence&nbsp;in 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<p>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. &nbsp;More than 320,000 people in Djugu territory are now at risk of being cut off from humanitarian assistance, warn the three organisations.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;reduction and&nbsp;suspension of&nbsp;activities&nbsp;come&nbsp;at a time when the country&nbsp;is&nbsp;facing&nbsp;the world&rsquo;s largest hunger crisis this century. In&nbsp;Ituri&nbsp;province&nbsp;alone,&nbsp;over&nbsp;half of the&nbsp;population &ndash; nearly&nbsp;3 million people&nbsp;&ndash; are facing&nbsp;extreme&nbsp;levels of hunger. Of all the provinces in DRC,&nbsp;Ituri&nbsp;has the largest&nbsp;number of people facing extreme hunger, and&nbsp;nutrition and health actors like Save the Children have now lost access.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;1.5 million people&nbsp;are&nbsp;already&nbsp;displaced in&nbsp;Ituri, half of them children.&nbsp;They&nbsp;are&nbsp;relying on humanitarian assistance to survive.&nbsp;The&nbsp;disruption&nbsp;of access&nbsp;to food, water,&nbsp;shelter,&nbsp;healthcare and protection services&nbsp;will&nbsp;only&nbsp;push&nbsp;these&nbsp;extremely vulnerable populations&nbsp;further towards the abyss,&rdquo; said Caitlin Brady, NRC&rsquo;s Country Director.&nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Many armed actors in DRC have been&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/reliefweb.int\/report\/world\/children-and-armed-conflict-annual-report-secretary-general-summary-2020\">accused of grave violations<\/a>&nbsp;of child rights in conflict.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Children and women are&nbsp;paying the highest price in conflicts.&nbsp;Hospitals have been attacked, denying&nbsp;pregnant 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&nbsp;to armed groups and&nbsp;even&nbsp;killed 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,&rdquo; said Save the Children&rsquo;s Country Director&nbsp;Amavi&nbsp;Akpamagbo.&nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Women and children face extreme levels&nbsp;of&nbsp;physical and sexual violence&nbsp;at the hands of armed actors. We have&nbsp;programming to protect these&nbsp;groups&nbsp;but&nbsp;it&rsquo;s increasingly hard to safely access them. We must see an end to abuses and impunity,&rdquo;&nbsp;said Martine Villeneuve, Country Director for Danish Refugee Council.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The three organisations&nbsp;call on all parties to the conflict to safeguard civilians&rsquo; lives and dignity and allow&nbsp;safe,&nbsp;principled humanitarian access&nbsp;to all affected&nbsp;populations.<\/p>\n<p><i>Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Norwegian Refugee Council.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-newsroom.com\/\">Source: Africa Newsroom &#8211; APO<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Download logo A new wave of violence&nbsp;in 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[4585],"class_list":{"0":"post-209642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa-news-2","8":"tag-apo","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/thousands-of-people-in-dr-congo-are-in-desperate-need-of-humanitarian-assistance-amid-a-new-surge-of-violence.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}