Four experts from DR Congo’s Goma Volcano Observatory took the trail up Mount Nyiragongo last week to get a closer look at the volcano which last month spewed rivers of lava and forced the evacuation of a city
Continue reading...Category Archives: Democratic Republic of the Congo
Delta variant of Covid spreading rapidly and detected in 74 countries
Concerns over impact on poorer countries, while richer governments try different containment measures
The Delta variant of Covid-19, first identified in India, has been detected in 74 countries and continues to spread rapidly amid fears that it is poised to become the dominant strain worldwide.
With outbreaks of the main Delta strain and several of its sub-lineages confirmed in China, the US, Africa, Scandinavia and the Pacific, concern increasingly is focusing on how it appears to be more transmissible as well as causing more serious illness.
Continue reading...Italy investigates UN officer over death of diplomat in DR Congo
Prosecutors accuse suspect of failing to ensure protection of convoy that was attacked in February
Italian prosecutors have placed a UN officer under investigation in relation to the murder of Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was killed in February along with two other people in an attack in the restive east of the central African country.
Magistrates in Rome are investigating the role of a UN World Food Programme (WFP) officer in the DRC, whose name has not been disclosed, who is accused of allegedly omitting to take all the necessary security to ensure against a potential attack.
Continue reading...‘Exponential’ rise in Covid cases in DRC capital, reports WHO
City of Kinshasa, home to 15 million people, is amid third wave of infections, authorities confirm
The UN’s health agency said on Thursday that it detected a surge of coronavirus cases late last month in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
“An exponential rise in the spread of Sars-CoV-2 virus has been recorded in Kinshasa,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a weekly report.
Continue reading...‘Fear everywhere’: hundreds of thousands flee DRC volcano’s river of death – in pictures
Devastation hampers relief efforts around city of Goma as people speak of losing everything after eruption on Mount Nyiragongo
Continue reading...DRC volcano: thousands flee amid fears of further eruptions – video
Thousands of people have fled the Congolese city of Goma, some picking their way across landscapes scarred with lava, after officials said a second volcanic eruption could happen at any time.
Thirty-one people were killed on Saturday evening when Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, sent a wall of orange lava downhill towards the city, destroying 17 villages on the way. The lava stopped just 300 metres short of Goma airport, the main hub for aid operations in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
At least 15 die in lava flows after volcano erupts in Democratic Republic of Congo
More than 500 homes have been destroyed by the lava that has poured into villages, officials and survivors say
At least 15 people died when torrents of lava poured into villages after dark in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, destroying more than 500 homes, officials and survivors said on Sunday.
The eruption of Mount Nyiragongo on Saturday night sent about 5,000 people fleeing from the city of Goma across the nearby border into Rwanda, while another 25,000 others sought refuge to the north-west in Sake, the UN children’s agency said on Sunday.
Continue reading...DR Congo volcano: thousands flee as Mount Nyiragongo lava flows destroy homes – video
Thousands of residents abandoned their homes as the city of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was thrown into panic when a nearby volcano erupted. Lava from Mount Nyiragongo destroyed homes on the edge of Goma, which has a population of about 1 million people, but appeared to be slowing by midday on Sunday, giving hope that further damage could be avoided
Continue reading...DRC orders evacuation of Goma after Nyiragongo volcano erupts
Thousands of people head towards border with Rwanda as lava approaches outskirts of city
A river of flaming lava that poured out of the erupting Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has reached the suburbs of Goma, an eastern city of nearly 2 million people.
Officials said on Sunday that the molten stream had reached the airport on the outskirts of the city, but witnesses said the flow appeared to have halted later in the morning.
Continue reading...Gaza damage and Glasgow raids: human rights this fortnight in pictures
A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru
Continue reading...Price of gold: DRC’s rich soil bears few riches for its miners – photo essay
As the value of gold reached new heights last year, those mining it continued to face crippling deprivation and dangerous conditions
- Produced as part of Congo In Conversation, with the support of the Carmignac photojournalism award. Text and photographs by Moses Sawasawa, a photographer based in Goma and co-founder of Collectif Goma Oeil
The muddy slopes surrounding the eastern Congolese gold-mining town of Kamituga hold vast wealth and crippling deprivation.
In South Kivu province near the borders of Rwanda and Burundi, Kamituga has mineral resources estimated to be worth $24tn (£17tn) in untapped deposits. Yet the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the lowest levels of GDP per capita in the world and people work in dangerous conditions with little hope of scratching out anything more than a meagre existence from tough and dangerous work.
Continue reading...Welcome to Semuliki: on the trail of the ADF’s Islamist militants | photo essay
Photojournalist Hugh Kinsella Cunningham has been embedded with Congolese soldiers in the DRC’s ‘triangle of death’. The elusive insurgents they are hunting have pledged allegiance to Islamic State
At the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, in a vast territory that ranges from the lofty Rwenzori mountains to the lush rainforest of the Semliki valley, one of the world’s most active militant groups is responsible for the massacre of hundreds of civilians.
The ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) was originally an opposition rebel group from Uganda rooted in a radical agenda of religious militancy. Taking advantage of the regional power vacuum, the group fled to Beni territory in neighbouring DRC to find shelter from the Ugandan army.
Continue reading...Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures
A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China
Continue reading...DRC aid agencies appeal to UK Foreign Office to suspend ‘disastrous’ cuts
Fears of 60% reduction in budget for country where 27.3m said to be experiencing acute food insecurity
A consortium of 19 aid agencies operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo has issued a last-minute appeal to the UK Foreign Office to suspend planned aid cuts to the country, where a third of the population faces acute food insecurity.
The Foreign Office, the second largest provider of aid to the war-torn country, has told aid agencies that cuts are very likely. Although the size of them is not yet agreed, one report has suggested a 60% reduction in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office budget for the country. The FCDO’s aid programme for Congo was worth £180m in 2019.
Continue reading...Leak reveals UK Foreign Office discussing aid cuts of more than 50%
Internal reports show projected cuts including 59% in South Sudan, 60% in Somalia and 67% in Syria
Some of the poorest and most conflict-ridden countries in the world will have their UK aid programmes cut by more than half, according to a leaked report of discussions held in the last three weeks among Foreign Office officials.
The cuts include slashing the aid programme to Somalia by 60% and to South Sudan by 59%. The planned cut for Syria is reported at 67% and for Libya it is 63%. Nigeria’s aid programme would be cut by 58%.
Continue reading...‘Falling off a cliff’: pandemic crippling world’s most fragile states, finds report
The world’s poorest are becoming poorer as the impact of Covid compounds existing crises, says Disaster Emergency Comittee
Thousands could starve in the world’s most fragile states as the pandemic comes on top of existing crises, warns a new report today which found aid workers are deeply pessimistic about the coming year.
The survey of aid workers by the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) found that they believed humanitarian conditions were at their worst in a decade.
Continue reading...What can we learn from Africa’s experience of Covid?
Though a hundred thousand people have died, initial predictions were far worse, giving rise to many theories on ‘the African paradox’
As Africa emerges from its second wave of Covid-19, one thing is clear: having officially clocked up more than 3.8m cases and more than 100,000 deaths, it hasn’t been spared. But the death toll is still lower than experts predicted when the first cases were reported in Egypt just over a year ago. The relative youth of African populations compared with those in the global north – while a major contributing factor – may not entirely explain the discrepancy. So what is really going on in Africa, and what does that continent’s experience of Covid-19 teach us about the disease and ourselves?
“If anyone had told me one year ago that we would have 100,000 deaths from a new infection by now, I would not have believed them,” says John Nkengasong, the Cameroonian virologist who directs the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Incidentally, he deplores the shocking normalisation of death that this pandemic has driven: “One hundred thousand deaths is a lot of deaths,” he says.
Continue reading...Italian ambassador to DR Congo dies in attack on UN convoy
Luca Attanasio and two others killed in attempted kidnapping north of Goma in eastern DRC
Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and two other people have been killed in an attack on a United Nations convoy in the restive east of the central African country.
The convoy from the World Food Programme (WFP) was attacked at about 10.30am local time (0830 GMT) during an attempted kidnapping near the town of Kanyamahoro, about 10 miles north of the regional capital, Goma, a spokesperson for Virunga national park said.
Continue reading...Indigenous peoples face rise in rights abuses during pandemic, report finds
Increasing land grabs endangering forest communities and wildlife as governments expand mining and agriculture to combat economic impact of Covid
Indigenous communities in some of the world’s most forested tropical countries have faced a wave of human rights abuses during the Covid-19 pandemic as governments prioritise extractive industries in economic recovery plans, according to a new report.
New mines, infrastructure projects and agricultural plantations in Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Indonesia and Peru are driving land grabs and violence against indigenous peoples as governments seek to revive economies hit by the pandemic, research by the NGO Forest Peoples Programme has found.
Continue reading...DRC is rich with farmland, so why do 22 million people there face starvation? | Vava Tampa
For two decades the global community has stood by while militia groups have got away with killing, raping and looting
I was food shopping when I read the news. Nearly 22 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are facing starvation and malnutrition. Now. In 2021.
You have to wonder how a country with eight months of rain, more than 50% of all the rivers, lakes and wetlands in Africa, and more agricultural land than any African country, with the potential to feed up to 2 billion people, gets to the point where it is unable to feed its population of 100 million.
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