Many of the displaced people are now sheltering with host families and often crowded into single-room houses with poor access to clean water and sanitation. To help meet their needs, Oxfam has set up a rapid response office in Bukavu, a city in the province of South Kivu, and is scaling up its work in North Kivu province.
Together with a local organization, Oxfam is now trucking 200,000 liters of clean water each day into major population centers, such as Lubero in North Kivu, where many displaced people have sought refuge. The organizations are also working to rehabilitate the water systems in those communities and Oxfam is distributing essential household items such as soap and buckets.
Though Oxfam is now helping 130,000 additional people, insecurity is making the delivery of this life-saving aid difficult in some areas. Fighters have cut off the roads to places such as Walikale in North Kivu and also to parts of South Kivu. Oxfam is calling on all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and let aid through.
The harsh conditions many displaced people now face follow on the heels of the escalating violence they have endured in the months since the military offensive began. In a recent survey Oxfam conducted, villagers recounted the horrors of rape, torture, forced labor, and reprisal attacks. One woman told Oxfam she had been raped nine times. Other people talked about underground rooms where villagers were beaten and plunged in barrels of salt water. Residents of one community said their entire village emptied out at night, with everyone preferring to sleep in the fields rather than in their own homes. It was safer in the open, they said.
Who is attacking the civilians in Congo? In the survey, which included nearly 600 interviews, villagers reported that both the Congolese army and members of the FDLR were responsible for the atrocities. Earlier this year, members of militia and a rebel group were hastily integrated into the Congolese army, which has led to human rights abuses. Civilians surveyed said that one of the solutions to the trauma they have endured would be to improve the discipline, pay, and training of the Congolese army many of whose members—especially those newly integrated—have not been paid. As a consequence, extortion is widespread.
The UN's peacekeeping force—known as MONUC and the largest of its kind in the world—has a broad mandate in this conflict. While MONUC is reportedly providing rations and logistical support to the Congolese army, Oxfam maintains that the force's main priority should be to protect civilians, and it's concerned that there are not enough safeguards in place for that protection. Oxfam is calling on MONUC to set conditions for its involvement in these operations which, at the moment, are having a devastating impact on civilians.
For example, Oxfam says that MONUC should ensure that the Congolese government is taking clear steps to minimize the impact of this military initiative on civilians by not deploying officers with a documented record of human rights violations and by punishing violations committed by its own forces. The peacekeeping force should withhold its support of the operation if abuses continue, says Oxfam.
The organization also says that the international community needs to recognize that military action alone will not provide the answer for the insecurity that has plagued eastern Congo for so long. In the Oxfam survey, the vast majority of communities affected by the FDLR called for peaceful dialogue, and only two favored forced disarmament. Time and investment need to be put into non-military methods of disarming militia. And there needs to be a widespread recognition that sustainable peace will come to Congo only when the root causes of the conflict have been addressed.
]]>There, on the shore behind what's left of a half-constructed mansion, the chug-chug-chug of a diesel pump holds the promise of clean water for 11,042 people at Buhimba camp. They are just some of more than one million villagers forced to flee their homes as conflict has swept across the eastern provinces of that vast country. A short distance away, a second pump, submerged deep in the lake, provides water for an additional 18,016 people in two other camps known as Mugunga I and II.
Without clean water, without decent sanitation, and without the public health outreach that helps people understand the link between the two, waterborne diseases could ripple through theses camps with devastating consequences. That's what Oxfam, together with its local partner, Action Santé Femme, or ASAF, was determined to prevent when it helped establish the water systems for these three camps—and a fourth, Bulengo—outside Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. Through a network of rigid plastic pipes, storage tanks, and outdoor faucets, water from Lake Kivu now gushes into the jerry cans of thousands of families with the turn of a tap.
At the top of a short but steep hill at Buhimba, where two massive water storage tanks frame the sprawling camp below, Helene Kanyere Ndakas stands ready with a notebook in hand. She is the manager of this storage station—and knows better than almost anybody the importance of making sure the system runs smoothly.
What gives her that special knowledge?
Ndakas herself relies on the water that flows from it. She and her family are among the thousands of people who are now making their homes temporarily at Buhimba.
Flipping her notebook open, Ndakas points to the careful records she keeps each time she opens the valves to refill the tanks with lake water. And she notes the amount of chlorine that goes in to guarantee its cleanliness. Hired by Oxfam, Ndakas is on water duty from 6am to 4pm each day—a job she takes very seriously.
"People are depending on her," says Charles Mampasu, an Oxfam program manager in Goma. "And they're happy with her job."
In a place where there was little or no infrastructure to support a water system, supplying tens of thousands of people with clean water on an emergency basis has been no small feat. And making sure they continue to have access to it when Oxfam moves on to its next project is one of the organization's central concerns. That's why Oxfam is working hand-in-hand with ASAF to help it build its ability to handle the water system on its own, particularly in Mugunga camps.
A tour through Mugunga I shows how important a steady supply of clean water can be—especially when people are struggling with such harsh living conditions. Built on fields of sharp volcanic rocks, the shelters many people now call home are not even tall enough in which to stand. Made from grasses and dried banana leaves flung over a frame of saplings and topped with a plastic sheet, the huts offer only minimal protection from the elements. To keep warm—and to drive the bugs out—many people cook on small wood fires inside their huts, the smoke curling into their lungs and out through the cracks in the shelter walls.
At the health clinic, the nurse on duty reports that respiratory infections are among the most common medical problems he sees. About 150 people a day flock to the clinic with a host of ailments that also include malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrhea. The latter is what the clean water—and scores of latrines that Oxfam has also installed—help to fight.
Snaking across the rocks, over roots, and through the mud, a network of wide black plastic pipes carries the water from Lake Kivu. It's replacing a temporary supply that another agency had been trucking in daily and storing in two plump water bladders—they look like giant egg yokes when full—at a cost of $3,500 a week. Nearby, the water blasts from faucets when kids turn on the taps to fill plastic jugs before lugging them home.
The water jug of choice for many kids has a familiar look: it's the container that once carried their family's allotment of cooking oil, doled out during the regular food distributions that displaced people have no choice but to depend on. Here at Mugunga, nothing goes to waste—not the jugs, and not the precious water they carry.
]]>"Life is water," says Oxfam's Brahim Abdel-Madjid. "Without water there is no life at all—enough water, sufficient water, good quality water."
Here at Koloma, that is what Oxfam is helping to supply to some of the 180,000 Chadians chased from their homes by recent waves of violence between rebel forces and government troops. About 7,400 displaced people have settled at Koloma, one of seven sites in and around Goz Beida in which Oxfam is now providing emergency services for a total of 52,000 people.
And for some, the help aid groups have offered, coupled with the advantages of being near a town like Goz Beida with its new hospital, mosque, and market, hold enough promise for a better life that home no longer beckons them.
"Some will not go back—even with security," says Abdel-Madjid, who is the team leader for Oxfam's public health education programs in the Goz Beida area. "Most of the people living in the temporary sites had never traveled to Goz Beida to see that there's a big market. You can trade. You can start a new life."
Clean water is certainly one of the lures—a benefit that has helped to soften the hardships many have experienced as their family members have been killed, their homes ruined, their villages abandoned.
In the mottled light inside a mat hut at Koloma, a crowd of women—and a baby or two—has gathered. These are the sushies—the female leaders of their communities. Sitting on the ground, folded in their colorful wraps, they talk about their lives since fleeing their villages and coming to this sandy sprawl of makeshift shelters. Abdel-Madjid translates.
Food is in short supply, they say. And they have no land to farm. To earn money to buy extra food, they gather wood in the bush to sell in the local market.
Many of them have lost everything in the conflict. Fatouma Sosal tells of the four huts that once belonged to her family in Tiero. All of them were burned down. She talks about the millet she used to grow in her fields and her lost self-sufficiency.
Kadjidja Mahamat says the days here at Koloma can be long, filled only with the chores of trying to keep her temporary household in order: cooking food in the morning—if there is food—washing her children's clothes, patching her hut.
But at least there is water—clean and ample—and for that the women are happy.
In their villages, says Abdel-Madjid, families used to drink from the same source in which they bathed and also shared with their animals, which left their droppings nearby. People were sometimes sick and their children would have "blajose," or bloody urine. But with clean water supplied from a large Oxfam storage tank erected at the edge of their settlement—and a new understanding of waterborne diseases and the importance of good hygiene—problems like diarrhea have disappeared.
"A lot of these people are coming from huts in the middle of the desert. They get to Goz Beida and suddenly they get clean water, schools, health care," says Sarah McHattie, an Oxfam program manager. "I don't think we'll see a big return."
The question of when—and if—displaced people will return to their villages is a complex one, says Poul Brandrup, Oxfam's country program manager in Chad. There are many factors people weigh in making that decision.
"They need to be convinced that they will be able to re-establish sustainable livelihoods," says Brandrup. "Safety is important. So are primary health services and water. And we are increasingly hearing their strong wish for their children to be able to attend school."
One of the realities is that the temporary settlements in which people can now access those essential services are, in fact, "artificial," says Brandrup. They offer limited possibilities for people to establish and maintain themselves over the long-term. For instance, without Oxfam?s assistance, communities could not sustain the kind of water systems—with deep boreholes and expensive diesel-powered pumps—on which they now rely.
"The displaced understand that it will not be possible for all to stay in the current sites," Brandrup adds. "At the same time, many villages have been destroyed and land taken over by others so return in those cases is no longer an option."
Economic and social development for rural villages may play a key role in some people's willingness to return.
"It is not possible to drill thousands of boreholes to replace the existing water systems," says Brandrup. "But people can learn to develop traditional open wells better and to ensure that water is not contaminated by animals or unsafe practices. This is, in most cases, the way to go when and if the displaced people can return to their villages."
Khadidja Saleh has already made up her mind about that—at least for the moment. She doesn't intend to leave Gassire, a settlement for 16,300 displaced people on the other side of Goz Beida.
Not far from the steady thump of an Oxfam generator pumping water for this temporary community, Saleh welcomes visitors into her home. A collection of three huts for her extended family, Saleh's improvised compound is like many crowded onto this dusty patch of earth, cobbled together from branches, plastic sheets, thatch, and grass matting.
The mother of six children, Saleh, her husband, and their family made it here safely after a three-day walk from their village of Fagatar—a place she does not want to go back to.
"Many, many people have been killed and no one took time to bury them," she says through an interpreter. "There will not be peace there."
Instead, she says, she would like to stay here and possibly farm a little plot where she can grow vegetables such as ochra—if she can get some land. It feels safe here, she added. And the water is close by and clean.
In Fagatar, Saleh spent about two hours each day fetching water for her family, lugging it home on the back of a donkey. Here, water taps are a short distance from her home. She and her children visit them four or five times a day, filling a 20-liter jug each time.
Even though there is not enough food for her family to eat here yet, Saleh is confident that the international aid groups that have streamed into the region to help will do just that—make sure that she, and the tens of thousands of other displaced villagers, will have at least the basics for survival.
"Here, the place is safe, so one day the food can come," she says.
But the challenges, including insecurity and lawlessness, that confront aid groups in this poor and remote region are enormous—and the needs of people seemingly without end.
As Saleh's visitors bounced in their truck away from Gassire, they passed a thin and tired-looking woman slapping the rump of donkey, urging it onward with its heavy load of a child and a battered pair of plastic water jugs. From the bottom of one, a steady drip of water caught the light. It drizzled from a rag plugging a hole—an afternoon's labor draining into the dust.
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