Attachments
CONTEXT
Overview
Ongoing instability, human rights violations and violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continue to displace people internally and across borders into Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. The upsurge in violence started in North Kivu, in eastern DRC, in March 2012 and caused considerable displacement in the affected provinces of North and South Kivu and Province Orientale.
Many people were displaced after UNHCR had finalized planning its 2013 programme, so their needs could not be included in the Global Appeal 2013. This supplementary budget appeal covers the needs of people displaced inside the DRC and across borders in 2012, of newly-displaced people in 2013 and of internally displaced persons (IDPs) returning to the DRC.
In 2012, an estimated 390,000 people have been internally displaced, mostly in North and South Kivu. In addition to internal displacement, more than 28,000 refugees fled to Rwanda and almost 57,000 to Uganda in 2012. By August 2012, growing numbers of DRC refugees were arriving in Burundi. In all three countries, arriving refugees are registered by UNHCR and/or the national authorities in reception centres and transferred to refugee camps in Burundi and Rwanda, or settlements in Uganda, where they receive assistance. The refugee figures in this appeal only include refugees who are in the transit centres or who have been transferred to camps/settlements. Refugees who have preferred to stay in the border areas and others who have returned to the DRC are not included in this appeal’s figures. At the end of December 2012, a total of 63,600 refugees who had left the DRC in 2012 had been, or were in the process of being, transferred to the refugee camps/settlements: 5,600 in Burundi, 23,000 in Rwanda and 35,000 in Uganda.
As the situation is expected to remain volatile in eastern DRC in 2013, this supplementary budget appeal also covers the needs of an estimated 50,000 people who may be internally displaced during 2013, 50,000 IDPs who may be able to return to calmer areas, as well as 56,400 refugees who may flee to neighbouring countries.