Looking at herself in the mirror, nine-year-old Helena squealed with delight at her reflection, standing upright with just the slightest support of her therapist. A year before, Helena – who lives in Mugunga II IDP camp in Goma – was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Able only to crawl, Helena had been confined to very specific spaces due to the lava in the IDP camp.
In October 2009, more than 280,000 people were displaced in the two northern DRC districts of Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé in Orientale province. The people of this region have suffered escalating attacks from the Lord’s Resistance Army since 2008 but the geographical spread of people in this vast remote region compounded by security constraints makes it difficult for humanitarian organisations to reach them and only a small proportion of IDPs in the Haut-Uélé region receive assistance from humanitarian actors.
For generations the Bamputi Pygmies were nomadic forest-dwellers but in 2004 they too fled the war. Now they live on the outskirts of Goma with little if any support from humanitarian agencies. They have no electricity or running water; straw-covered roofs on makeshift shelters provide poor protection from the frequent rain.
Although maternal deaths have decreased globally by 35% since 1980, maternal deaths in DRC have decreased by only 3% since 1990, the onset of the recent phase of conflict in DRC. Extended conflict has played a significant role in the destruction of a national health-care system already in an advanced state of disrepair, resulting in poor-quality care offered to communities, lack of well-trained health workers and, due to government disinvestment, unmotivated health-care personnel.
Frameworks developed by the UN and the Government of DRC (GoDRC) with international facilitation between DRC and neighbouring countries are achieving a great deal in terms of addressing the issues around return and reintegration despite the highly politicised humanitarian/transition context of North Kivu.
The last of Sudan’s civil wars between the North and the South ended in 2005 with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The wars have caused the displacement of more than four million people and the death of more than two million Southerners. The CPA mandated both North and South to make unity attractive, while also paving the way for the South to hold a referendum to decide whether to secede. However, there will be numerous challenges during the preparations for the referendum and after any secession.
A study conducted in Jordan in 20091 shows that a lack of information and transparency contributes to a dynamic of despair among the displaced and exacerbates conditions that motivate them to give credence to hearsay in making decisions about their future.