WORLD BRIDGE BLOG

The last time I visited North Kivu was in April 2008.  Things were relatively calm then following the signing of the Goma agreement earlier that year.  Although armed groups were continuing to violate the ceasefire, humanitarian access was fairly good, particularly in Rutshuru, where several official displacement camps had been established, as well as a swelling number of spontaneous displacement sites along the road.

Nine months later, everything has changed.

This past fall, rebels led by dissident general Laurent Nkunda took Rutshuru during a violent escalation in fighting. In its wake, the fighting left an estimated 250,000 people newly displaced, pushing the number of displaced people in North Kivu to over one million. 

I was able to witness the impact of this fighting as we drove from Goma to Rutshuru to meet with displaced people there. From my last visit, I recalled a large sprawling displacement site called Kibumba. From the road, I had seen distinctive orange plastic sheeting on the huts in the site. However, when we got to that point, there was nothing there but open fields. All signs of the Kibumba site were gone.  This was one of many displacement sites where civilians had been pushed out by Nkunda’s CNDP fighters and forced to go elsewhere. The camp had been destroyed, in clear contravention of international humanitarian law. 

Displaced people we met with in Rutshuru told us that when the CNDP took over the area, the people were told that they had been liberated and that they should go home now.  The CNDP then had the camps destroyed to prevent anyone from seeking protection there.  What happened to many of the people who lived in the those sites is still not clear.

We were able to meet some of the displaced near a UN peacekeeping (MONUC) base north of Ruthsuru town, where a new spontaneous displacement site has taken root. There have been distributions of food and non-food items like plastic sheeting to some 10,000 people at this site. But United Nations agencies and aid organizations were rarely able to access the site until CNDP leader Nkunda was arrested two weeks ago. This means that there are still major humanitarian and protection concerns for this population.   

When we asked what happened to the more than 50,000 displaced people who had been living in the Rutshuru camps and spontaneous sites, the people we spoke to said that some had fled to Uganda, some had gone to stay with host families, and some were in this new site. Very few had returned home. 

As we drove back to Goma at the end of the day, I spotted another spontaneous site I had seen last time.  In April, we had stopped on the side of the road to talk with one of the displaced who was weaving banana leaves into the frame of his new hut.  After he had fled his home, he had sought shelter in a church building, but he was then asked to go to this land instead. Now there is nothing there but a few sticks poking up from the ground, indicating where displaced people had once tried to survive before they were forced to flee again.     

North Kivu is still a volatile area, and the potential for new displacement is high as the Congolese and Rwandan armies continue their joint campaign to route out the FDLR rebel group. The humanitarian community must make a serious effort to find those people who were forced out of the sites in Rutshuru and ensure that they receive the humanitarian assistance they need.