Since early 2017, intercommunal fighting has displaced 1.4 million people, who fled from widespread violence and severe human rights violations in the Kasai crisis.
“A child that is suffering from severe acute malnutrition and at risk of dying is something that is already happening and children are dying because they are not getting the assistance they need …” “We have noticed a diminishing in the intensity of the conflict which is causing thousands to return home, and the problem there is, there is little to no capacity to provide assistance to all those people seeking to rebuild their lives,” Abeer Mezher, Kasai area manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council explained.
Mezher said current patterns mimics what she calls “pendulum migration,” where returnees are displaced to search for humanitarian assistance after coming back home to destroyed property and burned fields.
The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that 770,000 children under age 5 in the region are suffering from malnutrition, with more than half of those facing starvation from severe malnutrition.
“A child that is suffering from severe acute malnutrition and at risk of dying is something that is already happening and children are dying because they are not getting the assistance they need due to inaccessibility or because they are still displaced or because of lack of resources,” UNICEF DRC Communications Director Yves Willemot noted.
However, Willemot also explained that severe acute malnutrition can be reversed within a matter of days without any long-term consequences for the child.
Local health centers were also provided “therapeutic foods,” namely vitamin-enriched pasta, to distribute to the families of children categorized as severely malnourished.
Since last year, UNICEF has also supported some 70,000 of the most acute malnutrition cases and has complimented the World Food Programme’s food distribution activities and the Food and Agriculture Organization in restarting agricultural production through seed disbursements, Willemot explained further.
For the Kasai region alone, Willemot said UNICEF is seeking $88 million to fully implement its programs, with $45 million directly related to the nutritional component of its humanitarian assistance in the area — of which 25 percent is currently funded.
In April, $528 million were pledged at a U.N.-led donor conference for the various humanitarian needs in the country, still less than half of the $1.6 billion requested in the 2018 DRC Humanitarian Response Plan.