CONGO- In order to address the food challenge in Congo, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and its partner World Vision have launched an emergency operation to provide food assistance to 42,000 food insecure people in the Kasai and Kasai Central provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
This development is contained in a statement from WFP. Food assistance, according to the statement, will be provided to people who have fled their villages due to conflict in the region.
Where safe access is possible, WFP plans to assist 25,000 displaced persons in Kasai Central and 17,000 people in the Kasai province in the coming days.
Information reaching from Congo has it that food distributions have commenced in the town of Tshilumba with further distributions scheduled this month. WFP, in the statement further stated that as part of effort, FAO continue to identify the most vulnerable displaced people in areas identified with high levels of food insecurity, as determined in a recent food security study.
This food security assessment showed that in the last year, the number of people in need of urgent humanitarian food assistance in the DRC rose by 1.8 million, from 5.9 million to 7.7 million. In conflict-ridden areas, according to WFP, more than 1.5 million people are facing “emergency” levels of food insecurity, leaving many with no option but to sell everything they have while skipping or reducing their meals.
WFP is therefore leading the Logistics Cluster, which provides technical and logistical support to humanitarian organizations and has been operational in the Kasai region since June. Mobile warehouses have been built to this effect so as to store food and non-food items, while several trucks have been sent to Kasai and Kasai Central to transport food and supplies.
‘We launched this emergency response as soon as funds became available,’ said Claude Jibidar, WFP Representative and Country Director in DRC. ‘We targeted the most vulnerable among the vulnerable, and our access to these displaced people also depend on security conditions. However, with nearly one and a half million displaced people in the Kasai region, additional donor support is essential for WFP to scale up our operations and reach more vulnerable displaced people.’
