06 February 2025
The clashes that have been taking place for several days around and in the city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu, have resulted in major humanitarian needs and caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. From its offices in Bukavu and Uvira, the Luxembourg Red Cross continues to provide essential humanitarian aid under difficult conditions.
‘We have a team of four international staff and 16 national staff on the ground for the Luxembourg Red Cross, which has been active for five years in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are mainly helping displaced people by providing them with shelter and kits of essential household items, as well as survivors of sexual violence, by rehabilitating a hospital to meet their medical and psychological needs and by building them houses. We have also built two legal clinics near Bukavu’, explains Marina Anki, project coordinator for the Luxembourg Red Cross in DR Congo.
The effects of the fighting in the region are devastating for health facilities, which are becoming inaccessible despite the vital importance of the care they provide.
‘We fear that the violence unleashed in this conflict will spread southwards, and that there will be an upsurge in sexual violence, particularly affecting women’, warns Marina Anki. While the atrocities continue, more than 500,000 people have fled the conflict, almost the entire resident population of Luxembourg. ‘We provided aid to shelter displaced people in December, but as long as the conflict continues, massive support will be needed to meet the basic needs of displaced people’. At the time, the Luxembourg Red Cross had set up more than 220 emergency shelters in the Katasomwa highlands, in Kalehe territory.
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