Attachments
This is the first brief in a series examining factors impacting the aid agency access and safety in the Eastern DRC to support aid agency risk mitigation and forward-looking approaches to maintain access to food, health care, education and protection.
Using Insecurity Insight’s incident monitoring data, social media sentiment analysis and armed actor activity analysis from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), the series provides aid organisations with insight into patterns of violence affecting civilians and aid access. Through examination of reported violence affecting key sectors of aid activity attributed to various conflict parties, the series provides background to better assess specific threats to aid access, food security, health care, education, and community protection in IDP and refugee camps.
This first brief focuses on patterns of impact on aid of the M23.
Key developments
Concerns over rising violence affecting aid and health workers
- In March 2025, 38 reported incidents directly affected aid and health operations—a 15% increase from February. Over a third occurred in Ituri and North Kivu, with additional reports from Maniema, South Kivu and Tanganyika. On 09 March, a major incident in South Kivu saw five health workers and four patients killed in a hospital shelling.
- At least three aid workers were directly attacked, one of whom was shot and killed, in Ituri and Tanganyika province.
- Three hospitals and an INGO medical base were damaged by explosives during ongoing fighting between the M23 and the Armed Forces of the DRC in North and South Kivu. A hospital in North Kivu was also raided by an unidentified armed group who kidnapped patients, and in Ituri province, a health worker was kidnapped by CODECO militia.
- Politicised narratives around USAID funding cuts on social media called for an end to all foreign assistance framing aid as part of the problem not a solution to human suffering.
- Livestock was looted, farm goods set on fire and farmers killed and kidnapped in Ituri and North Kivu.
- At least five schools in Maniema and South Kivu were raided by armed men.
- At least three sites hosting displaced people were affected by direct violence.