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The United Nations – Violence and disease have displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the threat of renewed clashes is preventing civilians from returning home, warned an official. UN.
Leila Zerrougui, head of MONUSCO, the United Nations peacekeeping force in the country, Wednesday described "simultaneous emergency situations", including outbreaks of Ebola and measles, interethnic bloodshed and raging militias.
Zerrougui criticized the "spoilers" of Ituri province for "wanting to play on ethnic tensions" between Lendu farmers and Hema ranchers, which resulted in violent clashes and forced more than 350,000 people to leave their homes. home.
"The deteriorating security situation is interrupting the process of return that has been taking place gradually since 2018," she told the UN Security Council.
This caused new displacements to Bunia [city] and to force the humanitarian community to redirect its badistance to the most vulnerable populations, "she added.
Clashes in Ituri
Inter-ethnic clashes in the troubled and rich gold region of Ituri have also left 733,000 people in need of badistance, Zerrougui told the UN Security Council via video link from Kinshasa, capital of the DRC.
The province of Ituri has a history of ethnic violence, with more than 60,000 people killed and another 500,000 displaced by clashes between rival groups between 1999 and 2003, according to the UN.
Since December 2017, 4.5 million people have been displaced in the country and more than 850,000 have crossed the DRC borders to Angola, Zambia and other neighboring countries, according to the report. 39, United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.
The DRC was destabilized by the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s and by other regional struggles that left much of the country under the effective control of armed groups.
UN peacekeepers want to help end the fighting, Zerrougui said. MONUSCO helps Congolese authorities arrest Guidon Shimiray Mwissa, a member of the Nduma defense of Congo-Renové (NDC-R), a militia responsible for "conflict-related badual violence" in North Kivu, she added .
Ebola emergency
Zerrougui also described an Ebola outbreak that killed more than 1,700 people – more than two-thirds of those who contracted it – since its emergence in the eastern provinces of North Kivu and from Ituri, last August.
Together, these two provinces are bordering Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan.
Health workers sent to fight the virus were confronted with "widespread mistrust of the community" and violence from armed groups, such as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) armed group and the Mai Mai militia, said Zerrougui.
"This convergence of factors has created a deadly environment for people fighting the Ebola virus, to the point of being specifically threatened and killed by armed groups," Zerrougui told the New York-based council.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo was an international health emergency. Ebola is a highly infectious haemorrhagic fever that is spread by body fluids.
Meanwhile, a deadly measles epidemic in eastern DRC has claimed the lives of about 2,000 people since the beginning of this year, a report "even more serious than the Ebola virus," warned Zerrougui.
Struggle for power
On Monday, DRC Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga resigned in protest after being stripped of any responsibility to handle the Ebola outbreak in the country, the latest sign of tensions between the two countries. rival factions in Kinshasa.
DRC's policy has been plagued by a power struggle since Felix Tshisekedi won a surprise victory in a December 30 presidential vote against incumbent incumbent Joseph Kabila's favorite candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary.
US envoy to the UN, Cherith Norman Chalet, accused supporters of former President Kabila and said Washington would impose sanctions and travel bans on anyone who would undermine "peace" , stability and security "in the DRC.
"The absence of a national government, due mainly to the intransigence of political actors linked to former president Kabila, undermines any further progress that the Congolese people aspire to" declared Chalet on the board.
"We call on those who block the formation of the government to adopt the necessary flexibility to sit in a cabinet and meet the hopes of the Congolese people of a better future."
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