Civilians live in constant fear in Congo's "forgotten conflict"

Oct 28, 2009, 12:22 GMT

Geneva - Civilians in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo live in constant fear and face a critical humanitarian situation as rebels keep up attacks, the humanitarian aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders, MSF) said Wednesday.

The attacks include the kidnapping of children and abduction of women and girls into sex slavery, Kenneth LaVelle of MSF's Swiss branch told reporters in Geneva after four months in the DR Congo.

MSF, he said, could not reach many of the people affected by what he said was a 'forgotten conflict.'

In the last 14 months, more than 250,000 people have been displaced in the Uele region in the north-east of the troubled country. Nearly 2,000 are estimated to have been killed, and a similar number kidnapped.

The 14,000-square-kilometre area, originally home to some 1.5 million rural people, is patrolled by a small contingent of United Nations peacekeepers, insufficient to protect the local population, according to aid workers.

The group blamed for the havoc, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), is being hunted down by the armies of several nations, including DR Congo, Sudan, Central African Republic and Uganda. Fighters from the LRA, which originated in Uganda some two decades ago, set up bases in north-eastern Congo in 2005.

Efforts by the combined armed forces late last year to eliminate the LRA resulted in a dirty war that featured massacres and saw civilians bearing the brunt of sporadic fighting.

MSF said the governments - backed by the United Nations - should have taken into consideration what would happen when they began waging such a war against a group often described as ruthless in nature.

'They understood the consequences before launching (the offensive)... What we are seeing now is the consequence of the military action,' said LaVelle.

Aid programmes, including vaccinations and medical treatment against fatal illnesses have come to a halt, as the insecurity renders delivery impossible. Thousands are expected to die over the next 24 months from preventable diseases that MSF was treating.

The people in the north-east, mostly farmers, have been unable to sow their lands, either owing to fear or to their displacement, and are struggling to find nutrition.

'People will be hungry,' LaVelle asserted simply.

The UN's World Food Programme has limited and infrequent access to small areas, leaving a vast amount of the population without assistance as the toughest months of the year approach and the rebels' reprisals attack are unlikely to stop.

LRA attacks on villages generally include the abduction of young children. Many who have been taken are assumed to have been turned into child soldiers, while girls and young women are forced to become 'temporary wives' for the rebels or simply sex slaves.

'We can make the assumption the (kidnapped children) are child soldiers based on the history of the LRA,' LaVelle said, noting that most of the children, some as young as five, do not manage to escape.