Democratic Republic of the Congo: Ituri, North-Kivu & South-Kivu - Operational Plan for Eastern D.R. Congo, June 2023

The IASC Humanitarian System-Wide Scale-Up activation for eastern DRC responds to the need to intensify humanitarian operations in the provinces of Ituri, North-Kivu and South-Kivu in order to better address the growing humanitarian needs. The country’s prolonged crisis results from a complex mix of drivers that include insecurity, lack of access to basic services and widespread poverty. This scale-up aims at addressing the lack of food, protecting vulnerable people affected by the conflict, including those exposed to gender-based violence (GBV), and preventing the spread of communicable diseases.

Overview of the situation

Since March 2022, more than 3.3 million people have been displaced in Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu, bringing the total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the three provinces to 5.6 million people. Furthermore, there are approximately 1.7 million returnees who urgently require assistance to go back to their normal life. The protection incidents reported are alarming, particularly in the case of GBV, as the number of survivors registered have already surpassed the total figures for last year’s as of June 2023. Concerning the food security situation, almost all the territories within the three provinces were classified in “crisis” phase in the last IPC exercise (January-June 2023); two were in “emergency” phase. Moreover, 256,000 children are malnourished, with the majority in North-Kivu, followed by South-Kivu and Ituri. The ongoing cholera epidemic in North-Kivu and SouthKivu has affected 22,100 people during the first six months of the year, against 4,200 total cases in the whole of 2022. This and other epidemics, such as measles, are aggravated by insecurity, forcing thousands of families to miss out on vaccination campaigns as they flee for their lives. In May 2023, the devastating impact of floods in Kalehe territory (SouthKivu) affected more than 50,000 people, resulting in about 500 deaths.