CHILD SURVIVAL: A baby is weighed by an IRC-trained nurse in Kabare, South Kivu, as part of a program providing health services to some 65,000 children under the age of five and women of reproductive age.
CHILD SURVIVAL: A baby is weighed by an IRC-trained nurse in Kabare, South Kivu, as part of a program providing health services to some 65,000 children under the age of five and women of reproductive age.
CHILD SURVIVAL: IRC's Child Survival program also helps parents grow alternative nutritional crops to prevent malnutrition.
RAPE COUNSELING: Two IRC-supported counselors talk to survivors of sexual violence in the violent eastern part of the country. Rape is used as a weapon of war and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women are sexually assaulted every day. "Even as the conflict inches towards an end, women and girls continue to be the targets of sexual assault," says Karin Wachter, the IRC's regional technical adviser on gender-based violence.
LOCAL SUPPORT: To help rape survivors recover from their experience, the IRC is training over 40 local groups to provide support services such as medical care, trauma counseling and community and family mediation. Over 15,000 women have received counseling through the program.
HEALTH FACILITIES: A woman is examined in an IRC-supported hospital near Bukavu in eastern Congo. The IRC constructs and renovates health centers and hospitals, supplies health facilities with equipment, drugs and vaccines, and trains health workers and managers.
STAFF AND SUPPLIES: The IRC uses boats for transporting medical supplies and health staff on the Congo River near Kisangani. IRC health teams work together with the Ministry of Health to support nearly 200 health facilities used by over one million inhabitants across the country.
CHILD SOLDIERS: Demobilized child soldiers awaiting reunification with their families play checkers at an IRC day center in the battle-scarred town of Kisangani in Congo's Orientale Province. After children are disarmed and demobilized from the country's many armed groups, the IRC places them in foster care while tracing teams locate their families. Over the past three years, the IRC has helped toreunite over 1,200 children with their families.
NEW LIVELIHOODS: "Jules," 17, recently reunited with his family after seven years of fighting, is learning the trade of refrigerator and freezer repair. Since the Congolese war started in 1998, an estimated 30,000 children have been conscripted by the country's many fighting forces. The IRC is helping hundreds of demobilized children start school or apprentice with a local business. The IRC also is enabling families to establish their own farms, providing them with seeds, tools and animals.
To help reduce water-borne disease, a major killer particularly among children in Congo, the IRC supports local efforts to protect, build and rehabilitate wells.
WATER AND SANITATION: The IRC also organizes community education campaigns that promote good health, hygiene, and water and sanitation practices.
JOB CREATION: Many rural women have traveled into Bukavu and other towns in eastern Congo to work as porters, transporting heavy loads on their heads and backs. The IRC has provided a group of women porters from the outskirts of Bukavu with alternative ways to make money, such as the breeding of pigs and goats.
JOB CREATION
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(July 2006) As the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo prepare for the country’s first democratic elections in nearly half a century, civilians continue to be killed, injured and displaced by conflict in the eastern part of the country. The lead-up to the July 30 elections has already resulted in serious tension and a recent UN report describes the situation in the east as "extremely volatile".
The International Rescue Committee has provided humanitarian assistance in Congo since 1996 and played a key role in documenting the country's humanitarian crisis through a series mortality surveys. The latest survey, among the largest ever conducted in a conflict zone, found that nearly four million people have died since 1998. Nearly three years after the signing of a formal peace agreement, 38,000 people continue to die each month, contributing to a mortality rate one third higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa. |
