The number of starving people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has soared in the face of ongoing conflicts in the east and in the center of the country. Around 13.1 million people no longer have enough to eat; at an estimate in the previous year, there were still 7.7 million people.
This emerged from a recent report by the IPC Institute, which produces food security reports for UN agencies and other aid workers worldwide. According to the report, about six million children in DR Congo are malnourished.
Strong increase within one year
Most affected are the eastern provinces of Ituri and Tanganyika, where militias and rebels are at fault, and the central region of Kasai, which has been shaken by ethnic conflict, as the IPC further explained. The Institute is run by the World Food Program (WFP), the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF and private aid organizations such as Oxfam and Care.
The number of people suffering from hunger was reported by the IPC at the middle of 2016 at 5.9 million people. One year later, the conflict in Kasai had led to an increase to 7.7 million people. The United Nations had temporarily declared the situation in the Central African state to be one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world – which the Government of President Joseph Kabila angrily rejected.
