Conflict in D.R. Congo

A deteriorating situation

An upsurge of fighting in eastern Congo has seen an estimated 250,000 people flee their homes since late January. Oxfam is expanding its emergency response to provide support to an additional 150,000 people.

On film: Conflict in D.R. Congo

Oxfam's Jim Clarken recently visited Lubero, an area badly affected by the upsurge in fighting.

Oxfam is there

We are developing a flexible response to the new crisis that can provide water, sanitation and life-saving hygiene promotion to dispersed groups of people on the move, as well as larger groups of people sheltering in specific areas.

In pictures: Oxfam in action in the Congo

Throughout eastern DRC, we are already assisting half a million people including working in five camps in and around Goma. As a result of our response scale-up we plan to support more than 600,000 people affected by the conflict.

Teams have been sent to Lubero in North Kivu and Bukavu in South Kivu to plan the scale-up. In Lubero, Oxfam is already providing clean water and basic sanitation to 40,000 people newly displaced by the fresh fighting, especially to combat epidemics.

Aiding recovery

We are working across the country to help longer term recovery. We are:

• Providing water and sanitation facilities to communities
• Improving basic education
• Undertaking peace building projects
• Enabling people to start making a living again
• Helping to reintegrate refugees back into their communities

Campaigning and lobbying

The UN’s peacekeeping force, MONUC, has struggled to keep the peace and protect civilians forced from their homes. Oxfam is calling for more troops – particularly from the European Union – to support UN peacekeeping operations in D.R. Congo.

Oxfam calls on EU to send more troops to Congo (Nov 08)

The situation in D.R. Congo is fast-moving and Oxfam will continue to use its influence at a national and international level to help ensure that the people of D.R. Congo get the support they need to return home and rebuild their lives.

Donate to Oxfam's work in D.R. Congo

ECHO (Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission) is supporting Oxfam's emergency response in eastern D.R. Congo

Learn more

• Background to the conflict

An unimaginable situation

• An estimated 5.4 million people dead since 1998
• Around 1 million people made homeless
• Rape used as a systematic weapon of war

According to UN figures, some 250,000 people in the provinces of North and South Kivu have been displaced since mid-January following a military operation targeting the FDLR rebel group. This is the equivalent to the numbers displaced last autumn when intense fighting broke out, with the newly displaced hidden in far and remote areas.

In pictures: Congo's frontline

With the operations against the FDLR set to expand to South Kivu, there are mounting concerns for civilians there, several tens of thousands of whom have already been forced from their homes.

  The war is far from over for ordinary Congolese. These terrible human tragedies are happening in remote areas far away from television cameras, but this does not make the suffering less real for those concerned.

Marcel Stoessel, Head of Oxfam in the D.R. Congo

The five-year conflict

The 1998-2003 conflict in the D.R. Congo saw huge loss of life. Four million people died, some as a direct result of the violence, but many more from starvation and disease.

The war was between government forces, backed by Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, and rebel factions, supported by Rwanda and Uganda.

Fighting was fuelled by the D.R. Congo’s vast mineral resources and by the flow of small arms into the country.

Continued instability

Despite the signing of a peace deal in 2002, and democratic elections in 2006, there is still instability in the east of the country.

Although, according to the UN, some 300,000 people have returned to their homes in parts of the North Kivu, the calm in some areas, such as Rutshuru, has been accompanied by renewed insecurity in others, such as Lubero and Walikale.

The upsurge in fighting has severely hampered the ability of aid agencies to reach those in need.

Voices from D.R. Congo: Meet people displaced by the conflict

A long way to go

Helping communities rebuild their lives is a major task.

• Up to 1 million people have been living in camps for displaced people within the D.R. Congo
• A million more people sought refuge in neighbouring Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi
• People have lost virtually everything – family, friends, homes and their means of making a living
• Rebel troops need to be reintegrated into the army
• The systematic practice of rape and sexual slavery has led to the rapid advance of HIV and AIDS