GENEVA – More than 90,000 people who fled their homes in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because of violence are unaccounted for, the United Nations refugee agency reported yesterday.
Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said aid workers visiting parts of North Kivu province that had been inaccessible during recent fighting had found three makeshift displacement sites empty.
Three other UNHCR-run camps in the Rutshuru area – Nyongera, Kasasa and Dumez – were forcefully emptied and destroyed several weeks ago, Mr Redmond said.
“With the latest findings, the total number of IDPs who cannot be accounted for in the area has surpassed 90,000,” he said, using the official UNHCR term for “internally displaced persons”, people who have fled their homes but have not crossed an international border.
The fate of those who abandoned or were forced out of the camps is unclear, but Mr Redmond said many were thought to have returned to their villages or be staying with host families in the area.
Meanwhile, Congo’s government will meet eastern Tutsi rebels in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday for its first direct talks to formalise a ceasefire and discuss a peace process, DRC foreign minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba said.
Rebel leader Gen Laurent Nkunda has been demanding direct talks with President Joseph Kabila’s government as one of the conditions for ending his four-year revolt in eastern DRC.
Congo’s government had been resisting the idea of direct talks with Gen Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) rebels, insisting instead that the group return to a wider peace pact signed in January with several armed groups. – (Reuters)