GENEVA: The United Nations warned on Friday that the number of people facing emergency levels of hunger in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has almost doubled compared to last year.
According to the World Food Programme (WFP), the region is grappling with a “deepening hunger crisis,” but the agency cautioned that it can assist only a small portion of those in need because of severe funding shortfalls and challenges in accessing affected areas.
“One in three people in DRC’s eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri, and Tanganyika are facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. That’s over 10 million people,” said Cynthia Jones, the WFP’s DR Congo country director.
“Of that, an alarming three million people are in emergency levels of hunger,” she told a media briefing in Geneva.
She explained that this classification indicates people are enduring severe shortages of food and suffering from extremely high rates of malnutrition.
“The number of people that are facing emergency levels of hunger is surging. It has almost doubled since last year,” said Jones.
“People are already dying of hunger,” she added.
Since resuming its insurgency in 2021, the M23 militia has captured large areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, deepening the region’s humanitarian crisis and prolonging a conflict that has persisted for more than three decades.
In a rapid offensive, the group seized control of the key eastern cities of Goma and Bukavu, near the Rwandan border, where it has established a parallel administration and taken over nearby mining sites.
Jones said the World Food Programme urgently requires $349 million to sustain its emergency food and nutrition operations in the region over the next six months.
It was facing “a complete halt of all emergency food assistance in the eastern provinces” from February or March 2026, she said.
Jones noted that the two airports in the east, Goma and Bukavu, had been closed for months.
WFP seeks to establish an air bridge between neighbouring Rwanda and the eastern DRC.
