LUBERO, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO — Southern Lubero was once considered fertile territory — despite its poverty and political instability. Now, this onetime breadbasket faces famine, a brutal and omnipresent legacy of the brutal conflict between DRC’s military and the Rwanda-sponsored M23 armed group.
Access to fields has become perilously difficult. The food crisis, already critical in other areas, is unprecedented.
Kanyere Muliwavyo, 70, fled multiple attacks on the west coast of Lake Edward. She now depends on the charity of her neighbors in Kirumba to feed her six grandchildren, whose parents abandoned them.
“It was the pungent smell of rotting soya, corn and beans that welcomed me to my field,” she says of her homecoming. “Even though we’re a little safer here than before, hunger never leaves us. It’s so hard to bear the incessant crying of starving children.”
Recurring clashes have forced thousands of Lubero residents to abandon their villages, homes and farms. Access to certain fields is outright forbidden; others are riddled with unexploded ordnance.
Fields remain uncultivated for fear of brutal reprisals, exacerbating a desperate humanitarian situation, and the violence has shaken many organizations that once supported the agricultural sector.
Ten million people in the eastern provinces face acute food insecurity due to the conflict, according to the World Food Programme.
“The war has had a devastating negative impact on agriculture by preventing access to fertile land,” explains Jacques Kasereka Busu, in charge of agricultural activities at APETAMACO, a nonprofit that helps people develop their professions. “We are finding it extremely difficult to continue our activities.”
The consequences are particularly disastrous for children. Malnutrition compromises their physical and intellectual development, making them dangerously susceptible to disease, says Charlotte Katungu Sivunavirwa, a nutritionist at Kirumba’s Kasando Health Center. Dozens of the children she’s seen, including small babies, have shown severe weight loss or signs of acute malnutrition.
“Without urgent and sustainable food aid — and above all, an end to this conflict — we risk losing an entire generation,” she says. “War doesn’t just kill with weapons. It also kills slowly, insidiously, through hunger.”
“War doesn’t just kill with weapons. It also kills slowly, insidiously, through hunger.”a nutritionist at the Kasando Health Center in Kirumba
Amid despair, families try to help each other. They’re also trying to restart farming activities — as soon as security permits. The call for peace is unanimous.
DRC’s military set up camp in Anita Kavugho Sikulivalama’s bean field and left her crops to rot. Now, she struggles to feed five children.
When the army left, she wanted to cultivate the field but had no seeds. She managed to sow potatoes, but when the M23 clashed with Wazalendo self-defense groups nearby, those rotted, too.
“There is,” she says, voice breaking, “no freedom.”
