On the day the UN’s head of emergency response, Valerie Amos, visits the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Oxfam urges the United Nations not to fail communities cut off from much-needed assistance. The UN must plan for funding that reflects the level of need on the ground and better protect communities from attack, says the international agency.

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Tens of thousands of people will remain without life-saving aid unless the UN mission in Congo steps up its presence in areas brutalised by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), Oxfam warned today. Insecurity has continually put humanitarian plans on hold and forced an estimated 43% of people displaced by LRA violence in the remote Bas-Uélé territory to survive without any assistance at all. The call comes as the UN Security Council meets to discuss its peacekeeping force’s operations in a country terrorised by multiple rebel groups.

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Congo Army a threat in all but one community surveyed – reform needed before peacekeepers can withdraw

Civilians in eastern Congo are facing an increased risk of rape and forced labour as a result of internationally backed military operations against rebel groups, according to new research released today (15 July 2010) by aid agency Oxfam.

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Agency reacts to renewal of the peacekeeping mandate

Each and every peacekeeper is still needed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, aid agency Oxfam said today (28 May) as the United Nations Security Council renewed the mandate of MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force in the country.

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It’s our last day, and we all cram into one jeep for the drive back to Rwanda. I reflect on the trip as we pass through the DRC border, thinking how important it is that these NGOs exist. Imagine if the refugees who came here weren’t given camps. They’d stand a good chance of being slaughtered. For a boy such as Prince, the support from NGOs represent a chance to take his destiny into his own hands. And for a rape victim such as Kimanizani, donations to Oxfam go toward her medical costs and food and give her a chance to rejoin the world.

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It’s a 15-minute ride to Mugunga II, a camp of 10,000 Congolese displaced mostly from the fighting between the state and rebel militia, and the impossibly bumpy roads are like a ride on a barroom bronco. The buildings thin out as we leave Goma, and the people walking the roads become more trade-related. Boys with makeshift wheel barrel–like wooden scooters (I’m told they have organized races) cruise by, most hauling lumber or bananas. Women carry large sacks or other containers on their heads. Their sense of balance leaves me astonished. A few big open-top trucks with black-booted soldiers pass by, their AK-47s sticking out the sides like thorns.

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The piercing cock-a-doodle-do of a rooster pops my eyes open, and then drumbeats and chanting begin to fill the darkness outside. Must be a wake-up band. The bell at the top of the rickety church tower tolls five.

This morning we take canoes carved out of single, giant pieces of wood and travel about 18 kilometers downstream. The jungle is on a scale of which I’ve never seen before — twists of massive vines wrapped around trunks of juggernaut trees. On the riverside children of the local villages giggle as they wave and throw us dorks the thumbs-up. Some are barely two or three years old, with no adult in sight. Kids grow up fast here.

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In the morning, as we drive through the city’s mud-soaked streets on our way to the airport, I’m sucked into the world outside the car window, completely separate from my own life. The young man with the hardened eyes walking alone, carrying his plastic water jug down a pebbled road, does not know who we are or where we came from. It is tempting to feel as though we do not belong here. But it was that kind of thinking, in the form of nonintervention by most of the world’s biggest players, that allowed the genocide to happen.

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Right now I’m sitting in seat 24H, 40,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, on my way to the heart of Africa: the Democratic Republic of Congo. On my lap is a packet from Oxfam America, the humanitarian aid organization. The pages are filled with all sorts of information about the Rwandan genocide, the Tutsi and Hutu civil war, and other injustices, and so far I’m having to read everything three or four times because none of it is really making much sense to me. Oxfam brought up the idea of this trip a month ago. Another actor and I were to visit camps of displaced people, meet local officials, and see relief efforts firsthand to help make others aware of this ongoing crisis.

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