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	In 2016, violence and conflict in DRC displaced an average of 2,000 people per day by OCHA, Geneva Call, agencies Democratic Republic of Congo   August 2017   In Kasai, “even the birds had stopped singing”, by Dr Joanne Liu - President, Medicines Sans Frontieres/Doctors without Borders   MSF international president Joanne Liu has recently returned from a visit to Kananga city, in Kasai Central province, Democratic Republic of Congo. She shares her impressions of the ongoing crisis there.   During my recent visit to Kasai I went with our teams to a rural part of the region that has been particularly affected by violence. Villages and fields have been burned, and several mass graves have been discovered. A man approached us and said very simply, “The violence here was so terrible that we didn’t hear the birds sing for days.”   Yet when I first arrived, I got the impression that nothing had happened there. Kananga is a fairly typical, bustling Congolese town of around 750,000 people. The markets were full and loud music played from the small shops. This was not the same situation that my colleagues discovered in March. Back then, silence filled the town. Not a single school or shop was open. Fear was everywhere. In the end, I realised that the normality I was witnessing in the town was similar to the experience someone has visiting a loved one’s grave a year after their burial, when the grass has started to regrow over the tomb. Life has taken hold again.   I remember seeing a teenage girl laughing and running after other children along the hospital corridors. It was as if nothing had happened to her. But several weeks before, her sister had been decapitated in front of her eyes. The armed men took her away and kept her tied up on the floor for ten days. They raped her so many times it’s impossible to count. “If you speak, we’ll cut your head off like we did to your sister” they told her. What is clear is that the people of Kasai have lived through so much, it’s barely imaginable.   The crisis in Kasai started a year ago, but it’s taken a lot of time for us to comprehend its magnitude. During the worst months, no humanitarian aid arrived there – and it’s still extremely limited. Why didn’t communities ask for help earlier? A village elder replied: “When you are lying on the ground and people are shooting at you, you can’t get up and run.” MSF only started to work in Kananga in March – very late, too late – and today we are still conscious that we are only just scratching the surface of the problem.   The wounds of the patients that we treat tell us about the extreme levels of violence that the people of Kasai are facing. Out of fear, some seriously injured people have waited days, or even weeks before trying to see a doctor. One of the patients our surgical team treated had his hand cut off. He hid in the bush for several weeks, afraid of being found and killed, and treating his stump with traditional medicines. By the time he arrived at our hospital, an abscess had formed and a serious infection had developed in the bones of his forearm. His chances of avoiding further amputation are slim.   If our mental health teams ask what has happened, our patients never tell us who has inflicted this violence – the fear is always there. But they tell us their stories, which are invariably awful: your husband decapitated in front of your eyes; your wife raped in front of you and your children while you are tied up, forced to watch. But they only tell us their story once. Afterwards, they always ask the same questions: how can I earn a living, feed my family, rebuild a home. What is my future?   The crisis in Kasai is like a forest fire during the driest summer months; one spark in August 2016 has ignited the whole region. Millions of people have been caught in the crossfire of militia attacks, army repression, and even localised conflicts which have nothing to do with the initial spark, but have exploded due to the chaos that has reigned. And if today Kananga is returning to normal, very worrying sounds are still coming from other places in this region which is the size of Italy. The lack of access due to security issues makes it difficult to tell the difference between rumour and reality. What is for certain is that, even if from the outskirts it seems as if nothing has happened, a human tragedy has unfolded – and is still unfolding.   (July 2017: Within less than a year, the Greater Kasai region in the centre of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was transformed from a peaceful area in a troubled country to one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world today. Unrest in this area the size of Italy began in August 2016, when the Congolese armed forces killed a local chief. Within ten months: 52 mass graves have been discovered (There is no reliable number of the number of dead and wounded during this conflict) 1.3 million people have fled their homes (which places the DRC as the country with the largest number of refugees and displaced this year, ahead of Syria)   Up to 400,000 children are at risk of acute malnutrition according to UNICEF. Because people are not safe enough to work in fields to grow food the harvest, and therefore people’s main source of food and income is threatened. The ongoing violence and instability have drastically reduced the availability of medical services and treatment, as well as access to medical facilities.   Since April 2017, MSF has run its own facility in part of the Ministry of Health’s Kananga General Hospital. The team has rehabilitated the operating theatre and manages a surgery ward with a capacity for 49 inpatients. Outside Kananga, insecurity and violence are worsening. Local health centres are deserted or lack medicines and staff. An MSF team is operating mobile clinics to reach the population in the conflict-affected zones and provide medical assistance. Many displaced people lost access to their income sources due to the insecurity in the area and suffer from nutritional deficiencies).   http://www.msf.org/en/aggregator-content-type/testimonies-and-stories-field http://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/latest/2017/7/596765c84/violence-engulfs-congos-once-peaceful-kasai-region.html http://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/850000-children-displaced-waves-violent-conflict-greater-kasai http://unocha.exposure.co/kasai-in-crisis http://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/food-insecurity-soars-conflict-ridden-democratic-republic-congo http://webtv.un.org/watch/-briefing-on-the-humanitarian-situation-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo-and-central-african-republic/5534067738001/   Feb. 2017 (OCHA)   Aid agencies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have launched a groundbreaking Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) requesting US$748 million to address the most critical needs of 6.7 million people trapped in a 20-year crisis.   The long-term funding plan will target close to 7 million people each year between now and 2019. Last year’s appeal remained almost 40 per cent unfunded. If aid is not delivered on time this year, 6 million people will struggle to access basic goods and services, including 2.2 million displaced people and their host communities. Some 1.5 million people need protection services amid continuing human rights violations, and 6.7 million people across the country face threats from hunger and epidemics.   Most of DRC’s vulnerable people are in the country’s eastern regions, especially parts of North and South Kivu Provinces, which have been hard hit by years of conflict.   But pockets of vulnerability exist elsewhere, aggravated by DRC’s political deadlock, the economic downturn and the recent spike in inter-communal clashes in the southeastern provinces and in the three Kasai provinces.   Millions of people struggle to access food   DRC has vast amounts of green and fertile land that could potentially feed over millions of people. But two decades of conflict, epidemics and rampant insecurity have left millions of people in DRC reeling from malnutrition and food insecurity, which accounts for almost half of the deaths of children under age 5.   This year, an estimated 4 million people will suffer from malnutrition—including 3.5 million children and pregnant and lactating women—and 847,000 people are at risk of acute malnutrition. As a result, we are requesting over $137.4 million to provide food aid to 2.7 million people over the next three years.   In 2016, violence and conflict in DRC displaced an average of 2,000 people per day. More than 2.1 million people—most of them women and children—are now internally displaced. The country was also hosting about half a million refugees at the end of 2016.   Humanitarian partners are managing large operations across the vast country, and they have prioritized assistance to the “most vulnerable among the vulnerable.” These include the internally displaced, refugees and host communities, representing 64 per cent of people targeted by assistance this year.   A health-care system in crisis   The health situation in DRC remains grim. Access to health care is a major challenge nationwide. Regions such as Haut Katanga, Haut Lomami and Lualaba face significant health-care gaps, including a lack of qualified medical personnel.   Humanitarian agencies are doing their utmost to help the most vulnerable people, but the number of deaths from preventable diseases, such as cholera, malaria and measles, is unacceptably high.   For example, in 2016, 25,030 people died from cholera, malaria, measles or yellow fever. Malaria was the leading cause of death and hospitalization, with over 14.1 million cases reported from January to December 2016, including over 23,800 deaths.   Last year, only one third of the requested funds were received to provide people with clean water and basic hygiene supplies. The 2017-2019 appeal seeks to meet the most urgent health-care needs of some 2.4 million people. http://bit.ly/2kABTLw   July 2016   Democratic Republic of Congo: first steps towards greater respect for the civilian populations in North Kivu, by Marie Coutin Lequin. (Geneva Call)   Geneva Call is entering its second year of work in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The organization has recently observed concrete examples of improvements in respect for civilians by various armed groups with which it is in dialogue.   In North Kivu, Geneva Call has initiated discussions with four active armed groups and during the past few months it has already trained more than 200 officers and combatants about Humanitarian Law, particularly on the rules governing child protection and prohibiting sexual violence.   In February 2016, following an attack on enemy forces, the Mai Mai armed group, Nduma Defense of Congo – Rénové announced that it had taken in members from enemy combatants’ families – mostly women and children – and had subsequently handed them over to a humanitarian organization specialized in civilian protection.   For their part, according to confirmed sources, the Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo (APCLS) handed a captured soldier back to government forces in the presence of a witness. The soldier had been captured in March 2016 and had been treated humanely during his detention.   The same month, the APCLS refused to enlist a 15-year old minor who wanted to join the movement, and instead returned him to his community. Indeed, in January 2016, with Geneva Call’s support, this movement amended its code of conduct in order to prohibit the recruitment of children under the age of 18.   Finally, the APCLS recently sought Geneva Call’s advice on the appropriate action to take following a case of child abuse perpetrated by one of its combatants. Geneva Call advised it to turn the combatant in to the state’s judicial authorities and to explain that it did not have the capacity to meet the requirements for a fair trial as stipulated in International Humanitarian Law. The combatant has since been handed over to the Armed Forces of the DRC.   According to Marie Coutin Lequin, Programme Manager for the DRC, “Even if humanitarian law violations perpetrated by armed actors unfortunately remain prevalent in North Kivu, it is important to note and to encourage their efforts to increase respect towards civilian populations and humanitarian norms.”   Geneva Call is continuing its dialogue with four armed groups in North Kivu and anticipates beginning negotiations with a fifth group in the coming weeks.   Geneva Call also regularly holds information sessions with Congolese authorities at the central, provincial and customary level in order to increase support for its approach towards strengthening the implementation of international humanitarian law.   Violations of international humanitarian law are numerous in the DRC, particularly against civilian populations as they are frequently and deliberately targeted. The United Nations has reported 1.8 million internally displaced people in the DRC in 2016 and several hundreds of thousands of victims since the beginning of the conflict. Finally, from among nearly 50 recorded incidents between January and May, 22% were kidnappings of humanitarian organization members.   http://bit.ly/2cjyMmE http://bit.ly/2c5xdrO Visit the related web page
	Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding by CSPPS, Cordaid, agencies   The Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (CSPPS) is a South-North non-governmental coalition of peacebuilding organizations that coordinates and supports civil society participation in the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (IDPS).   The goals of CSPPS are to develop and strengthen the voice and capacity of civil society at national and global levels to engage in the process of the International Dialogue – in agenda setting, policy negotiation, and in the roll out and implementation of the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States. The CSPPS strives to infuse peacebuilding values and concerns into the International Dialogue and in related policy processes, globally.   This website presents the work of CSPPS and latest progress and news from the countries and international processes where it is acting to safeguard and solidify civil society engagement in processes related to peacebuilding and statebuilding.   In all its activities the platform strives to voice the views and concerns of people living in places affected by conflict and fragility.   Ongoing, full and meaningful civil society engagement is critical to have these voices heard in the development arena and to optimize state-society relations.   March 2016   Safeguarding Inclusivity and the Role of Civil Society in Conflict Affected States.   The principle of inclusivity is vital to delivering the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in societies affected by conflict and fragility. Where state-society relations are weak and where state institutions lack capacity, the meaningful involvement of civil society holds a pivotal key to ensuring whole-of-society ownership and implementation of the new global goals, particularly where the building of peaceful societies is centerfold.   Yet while a consensus around the need for greater inclusivity in the design and implementation of policy has risen in recent years, there are unique challenges in contexts affected by conflict and fragility. This paradox lies at the heart of the SDG implementation challenge.   This document serves as a context setting paper for the World Bank Fragility, Violence and Conflict Forum 2016 on these issues. It reviews evidence around why inclusivity matters, particularly in countries emerging from conflict and fragility, 2) reflects upon the debates around the nature and role of civil society and the particular challenges faced in these contexts, 3) examines lessons around the role of civil society, and 4) considers potential entry points for ensuring meaningful inclusion of civil society in the effective implementation of Agenda 2030:   http://bit.ly/1QiC02K http://www.cspps.org/cspps-resources Visit the related web page
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