afrol News, 19 July - "Few humanitarian organisations, despite the availability of funding, have stepped forward to help" civilians in Congo Kinshasa's eastern North Kivu province, activists complain in a new report. More than 160,000 Congolese have abandoned their homes in North Kivu since January 2007, when Tutsi warlord Laurent Nkunda began deploying troops across the province.

According to Rick Neal and Sayre Nyce from the Washington-based organisation Refugees International (RI), humanitarian organisations are "ignoring the crisis in North Kivu." Quick action had brought immediate relief for some civilians in the province, "but few humanitarian organisations, despite the availability of funding, have stepped forward to help as the crisis deepens and needs grow more acute," RI holds.

According to the two RI activists, who recently visited the province, "the surge in displacement in North Kivu has been a predictable, if disturbing, aberration from the general progress made in the Congo towards peace and recovery from war."

The UN estimates that, cumulatively, 163,000 have fled since January, including thousands in the past week alone, and that another 170,000 could be displaced by the end of the year. The most affected areas are the territories of Rutshuru and Masisi in the southern part of the province, surrounding the city of Goma.

For some time, the population has lived with extortion and human rights abuses from two sides: the Congolese national army (the FARDC) and the remnants of the Hutu regime that orchestrated the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 (the FDLR). Laurent Nkunda and his troops make up a third force, which is now is said to be "the most serious threat to civilians." Mr Nkunda, supported by Tutsi-dominated Rwanda, is a renegade from the Congolese army and has long resisted efforts to integrate his Tutsi fighters with the FARDC and see them dispersed across the country.

The first wave of displacement occurred in January 2007 when Mr Nkunda deployed troops rapidly into Rutshuru and Masisi. The arrival of Tutsi soldiers allied with Rwanda terrified the local Hutu population, and tens of thousands left their homes and fields for the safety of areas held by the FARDC.

According to RI, Mr Nkunda's troops "used the announcement of a formal FARDC offensive against the FDLR in April 2007 as an excuse to target civilians, accusing them of collaborating with the FDLR, and provoking a second wave of displacement." A third wave is now underway as the FDLR retaliates, accusing civilians in turn of collaborating with Mr Nkunda.

The RI activists hold that, although there are a number of humanitarian agencies, such as CARE International, Action Against Hunger, and Catholic Relief Services, that work in other parts of the Congo - and even other parts of North Kivu - but they "have not bothered to respond to the needs of the newly displaced."

By staff writer

© afrol News

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