ReliefWeb

Highlights

• The conflict has continued to spread with intensity, while fragmenting and reactivating interethnic tensions: OCHA has drastically revised its key figures for the crisis, and now estimate that over 1 million people have been displaced

• UNICEF remains the main humanitarian responder to the crisis on ground, and is currently providing child protection, nutrition, non-food, education and WASH assistance targeting highly vulnerable returnees following CERF allocation.

• UNICEF funding requirements to respond to this crisis is estimated at $ 11 million, and would increase to introduce a Rapid Response -type multi-sector emergency response, currently seen as the most acute gap in the region.

UNICEF’s Response with partners

8 ongoing projects with 7 partners targeting 173,000 people across 3 provinces and 7 sectors

37,737 affected people reached as of 31 March, including 23,079 children

333 children enrolled in militias and detained in Kananga Central prison released

3,722 children enrolled in recreational activities

2 schools (12 classrooms out 24 planned) for 935 children rebuilt

Situation Overview

The conflict has continued to spread and intensify, while fragmenting and reactivating interethnic tensions. Based on UNICEF monitoring reports, there have been 22 attacks allegedly perpetrated by Kamuina Nsapu militia groups in the last month, representing a sharp increase of up to 50 attacks since the beginning of the conflict in August 2016.

OCHA estimated that these incidents have claimed the lives of over 400 people mostly policemen, militiamen, soldiers and civilians. In one attack, on 24 March, 2017 the militia ambushed a convoy of police reinforcements on the main road between Tshikapa and Kananga, and killed 39 policemen according to official sources. More than one million displaced population are reported.

Kasai, Kasai Central and Lomami provinces are currently the most affected areas.

Other security-related highlights during the reporting period include:

• The division and fragmentation of the Kamuina Nsapu movement: It has now spread over an area of more than 100 000 km2 (3 times size of Belgium) and appears to be made up of several dozens of relatively autonomous groups with varying agendas and no clear overarching authority. It is not clear whether many of these groups have links to the original Kamuina Nsapu group at all.

• The re-emerging of pre-existing local interethnic tensions with the arrival of the militia in several areas: In a pattern repeated several times in the recent weeks, new converts to the Kamuina Nsapu movement came mostly from one of two local sub-ethnic groups, and they have started to use their new affiliation to persecute other group(s), with whom in the past, there were tensions. Mweka and Luebo territories of Kasai, as well as Kamiji and Luilu territories of Lomami appear to be the most affected by this new dynamic at the moment.

• The death of two international UN staff, alongside their interpreter and three motorcycle drivers. The two members of the Group of Experts on the DRC and their colleagues went missing in Kasai Central on 13 March, 2017 as they were reportedly investigating suspected human rights abuses in the region, and their bodies were found two weeks later. Investigations are on-going but the perpetrators remain unknown.

• The extension of the crisis beyond the Kasais: on 28 March, 2017 suspected Kamuina Nsapu militia entered Lualaba province of the former Katanga purportedly to recruit new followers, and 18 were killed in the ensuing reaction by the Congolese army; on 7 April, 2017, the militia attacked a town in the same area.

On the political front, a high-level governmental delegation led by the Interior Minister (also Vice Prime Minister) visited Kananga in March, 2017 to start negotiations with the Kamuina Nsapu reigning family as well as related militia groups. Despite optimistic declarations by government officials and symbolic gestures on both sides, this initiative has largely failed to translate into any significant improvement in terms of security, including in Kananga itself.