Republic of the Congo Assistance Overview, October 2024

CONTEXT

• Recurrent climatic shocks, such as seasonal flooding, routinely displace populations and contribute to food insecurity throughout the Republic of the Congo (RoC) by distrupting agricultural production and access to livelihoods and markets. Between October 2023 and January 2024, heavy rains and strong winds led to widespread flooding in at least nine of the RoC’s 12 departments, adversely affecting an estimated 336,000 people and resulting in the deaths of at least 23 people, according to the Government of the RoC (GRoC). Flooding destroyed an estimated 64,000 residences and inundated nearly 5,700 acres of cropland. The flooding in late 2023 and early 2024 compounded the impacts of previous floods in 2022, which had already resulted in significant damage to critical infrastructure, including health centers, roads, and schools; heightened food insecurity; population displacement; and safe drinking water shortages. The GRoC declared a state of emergency on January 2, 2024 in response to flood-related humanitarian needs.
• The RoC also hosts large populations of displaced people from neighboring countries, with more than 68,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in the country as of May, primarily from Central African Republic (CAR) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Armed conflict in late 2022 led to the most recent influx of asylum-seekers from the DRC, with more than 5,000 individuals arriving in the Ignié and Ngabé districts of the RoC’s Pool Department. In addition, at least 160,000 people in the RoC remained internally displaced during 2022, mainly due to armed conflict in Pool and recurrent flooding in the northern part of the country, UNHCR reports.
• Amid an outbreak of mpox in the DRC, health authorities in at least 12 other African countries, including the RoC, had detected cases of mpox as of August, leading the Africa Centers for Disease Control (Africa CDC) and Prevention and the UN World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a public health emergency. As of the end of July, the Africa CDC had reported 146 suspected cases in the RoC, resulting in the death of one person.