Reference :
V-P-CD-E-02561
Date :
02/03/2018
Caption :
Tanganyika province, Manono territory, Mukambwe village. Clashes between communities have affected thousands of families and created a deteriorating humanitarian situation. Families don’t gather together to eat during the day. The uncertainty of finding food is so overwhelming that the inhabitants wait for the night before eating.
Confidentiality level :
public
Publication restrictions :
publication without restrictions
Description :
Far from the attention of the media and humanitarian agencies, the people in this part of the south-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are struggling to survive. The latest clashes between communities have destroyed crops and left people there with almost nothing. The first signs of hunger are showing. Barter has become commonplace since communal violence broke out at the end of 2016. Since then the economy has flatlined, cash has stopped flowing and already-meagre harvests are now nearly non-existent. Around 50 small huts of earth and straw make up Mukambwe. But no cooking pot bubbles before them, no family gathers to share a meal. The children, skinny and wary, wander aimlessly. There are no smiles, no cries, no games. Just empty stomachs. The signs of malnutrition are clear.
In such a place, even the everyday tasks can become a problem and an obsession. Finding food. Moving. Getting medicine. Two health centres that were operating a few kilometres outside Mukambwe were destroyed during the violence. But despite a lack of support and decent medical supplies and equipment, the centres are nevertheless up and running again.
Hygiene, too, is an issue, and the lack of drinking water a recurrent worry. People drink from the rivers and sometimes from pools on the ground after it has rained.
Despite the desperate needs of the communities and the growing risk of starvation, humanitarian organizations are struggling to get through, mainly because of the lack of security, passable roads and funding.
And fighting between the Batwa and Luba ethnic groups has continued, in spite of the recent peace efforts by the country's government. According to the United Nations, communal violence in the province of Tanganyika displaced more than 650,000 people between December 2016 and February 2017. No one knows how many people have been injured, wounded or killed in the violence, not to mention the number of villages burnt down and crops destroyed.
Since the start of the unrest in Tanganyika Province, the ICRC has:
•renovated and furnished three health centres in Muzovoi, Kanteba and Lwakato, which have treated 37,500 people
•built nine emergency showers and 18 latrines, and installed three handwashing points and 32 cesspits in the hospitals of Manono and Ankorol to prevent the spread of cholera
•run a mobile clinic between Muzovoi and Kamala, providing 7,735 people with free medical care
•distributed essential household items to 35,600 people, food to 28,235 people and seed to 380 people.
Original material :
digital
Resolution :
4256x2832
Orientation :
landscape
Colour/B&W :
colour
