(New York) – Recent combat between rival units of the Congolese army has forcibly displaced more than 180,000 civilians, raising the risk of a new humanitarian disaster in the Congo’s eastern Kivu region, Human Rights Watch warned today. Fighting between loyalist troops and rebel factions at Kanyabayonga in North Kivu, and soldiers’ looting of homes and shops in nearby villages caused residents to flee, many of them into the forest.
According to a United Nations humanitarian worker, this flight represented the largest single incident of displacement since the installation of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s transitional coalition government 18 months ago under the Arusha peace accord.
“Forcing civilians to flee into the forest has been one of the worst killers in the Congo wars,” said Alison Des Forges, senior Africa adviser to Human Rights Watch. “Fleeing civilians are left without adequate food, water or medical aid.”
All international humanitarian agencies have quit the area of immediate combat, leaving most of the displaced with little hope of urgently needed assistance.
Many of the displaced are women and children. Some had fled from one place to another four times in the last month, first displaced by earlier fighting between rebel troops and Congolese soldiers in Masisi, south of Kanyabayonga, and in Walikale, to the west.
One 19- year-old woman reached the North Kivu town of Lubero, about 75 kilometers north of Kanyabayonga, but had left her sick mother and two-year-old daughter behind in the forest. Another woman was stopped on the road by Congolese soldiers who stole all the goods she was bringing home from market. She fled from them and spent the night in the forest. Destitute and in tears, she told a Human Rights Watch researcher that she had left 13 children, nine of her own and four orphans, alone at home in a town south of Kanyabayonga. Now they were on the other side of the battlefront, and she did not know who would care for them.
A United Nations peacekeeping force, known as MONUC, has troops in the area and a mandate to protect civilians at imminent risk of physical violence, but they have not yet intervened. In October, the U.N. Security Council authorized an increase in MONUC troops from 10,000 to nearly16,000 soldiers, but the recently arrived troops have not yet made a significant difference on the ground in North Kivu.
In November, authorities in neighboring Rwanda threatened repeatedly to intervene militarily in Congo, claiming that Rwandan Hutu rebel groups (including some former Rwandan Armed Forces, known as ex-Forces armées rwandaises, or ex-FAR) there endangered Rwanda’s security. Following reports that Rwandan soldiers had crossed into the Congo in late November, troops of the Congolese army who used to fight for the Rwandan-backed rebel movement, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie-Goma, or RCD-Goma) rebelled again against the Congolese army and are now advancing against them north of Kanyabayonga.
On Saturday, MONUC confirmed that arms and reinforcements had crossed the border into Congo to strengthen the rebellious troops. Rwanda has denied sending troops into Congo.
Congolese army troops fleeing from the advancing rebels last week looted Kayna and Kirumba, large villages north of Kanyabayonga, firing in the air as they arrived and frightening residents into flight. On December 17, the commanding Congolese officer arrested one subordinate officer in Lubero in connection with the looting.
Fighting halted on Wednesday but resumed on Sunday as the rebels pushed the battlefront further north towards the town of Lubero. MONUC staff who flew over the area said that at midday Sunday a school was burning and villages were empty.
“Another war in Congo means more civilians will die,” said Des Forges. “The international community must use every means available to get the Congolese army to protect civilians instead of causing them to flee their homes.”
