By Darioush Bayandor
June 22, 1999
Darioush Bayandor is the humanitarian coordinator for the United Nations system in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo and contributed this comment to the
International Herald Tribune.
Kinshasa - As world attention has focused understandably on Kosovo, the tragedy that engulfs the former Zaire is all but forgotten. Since last August a war involving the armed forces of eight countries and a dozen nonstate groups has brought death and destruction to a country ravaged by 35 years of corrupt negligence under the late Mobutu Sese Soko.
An estimated 700,000 persons are displaced within the country, and more than 80,000 have fled to neighboring Tanzania and Zambia.
Meanwhile, war and civil strife in Angola, in the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) and in southern Sudan have sent refugees from those countries to swamp the border towns and villages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 280,000 old and new refugees are in the country.
Assessment teams sent by the United Nations system to selected zones have returned with harrowing accounts of famine and epidemics.
Since January, massacres of civilians have been reported in Makobola, Kamituga, Mwenga and Welunga, all in rebel-held Kivu. No international inquiry has been set up to establish the facts.
In government-controlled zones, Tutsi survivors of the August 1998 debacle remain in hiding or protective custody, some under trying conditions. Steps are being taken to relocate them to third countries.
Not less disquieting are indirect consequences of the war on the day-to-day living conditions of town dwellers. A recent study by the UN Development Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization, on food security and economic conditions in Kinshasa, indicates that the food consumption of households in the capital has fallen by half since the start of the war. Given the meagerness of the household ration even in the best of times, it is to be feared that a critical threshold is about to be reached. Short of massive infusion of capital and goods, a real risk of economic asphyxiation looms. All accounts suggest that a similar state of disarray prevails in major cities under rebel control.
The scope and magnitude of the problems would far outweigh the capacity of UN humanitarian agencies in Kinshasa even if they were not, as unfortunately is the case, chronically underfunded. A UN consolidated funding appeal (that is, the total bill for the combined humanitarian programs of the UN system in ex-Zaire), launched last December, sought a mere $26 million yet could not be funded beyond 60 percent.
What to do? First, the international community must do more to put life into the peace mediation process. As has been said time and time again, humanitarian assistance should not become an alibi for political inaction. Turning away from Kosovo to take a glance at Central Africa is long overdue. The outgoing Belgian minister of cooperation, Réginald Moreels, has proposed an international humanitarian conference.
With the help of the European Community Humanitarian Office and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN agencies in the field are seeking to build on this idea to assemble decision-makers among the concerned governments to size up the magnitude of humanitarian problems both in rebel-held and in government-controlled provinces and to provide resources to deal with them. Action plans and a host of UN studies and assessments are already available.
Unless the world acts now, we risk another case of the remorse that so often follows major ordeals in Africa.
