Strengthening Food Security Cluster Coordination in the Democratic Republic of Congo

This operation has been revised as per budget revision 5 (see below)

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continues to suffer from instability and armed conflict, epidemics, nutrition crises and natural disasters in a context of high poverty levels.

The DRC presents one of the largest, most complex humanitarian crises in the world. Over 5.4 million people have died from violence in the East because of conflict, disease and malnutrition during the last decade. Since 2009, over 2.7 million1 people are displaced by the conflict, mostly in the Eastern Provinces of the DRC. In early November 2013 the main rebel movement in North Kivu, the M23, was defeated by the UN-backed Congolese Government and surrendered accordingly. However the root causes of the conflict, which mainly include inter-ethnic tensions and land disputes, have not been resolved. The other IDPs not affected by the M23 are victims of a number of different other armed groups, which continue to commit gross human right violations in the Eastern part of the country.

The latest Integrated Food Security and Humanitarian Phase Classification (IPC) exercise conducted in December 2013 has identified some 6,7 million people in acute food security and livelihood crisis in DRC2.

A weak government and corruption has also reduced the national capacity to respond to the crises in the country3. In addition to this, a persistent economic crisis, poverty, the poor nutritional status, poor utilisation of food, limited access to markets, lack of infrastructure are all compounding factors of food insecurity in DRC.

United Nations agencies are continuing to assist the vulnerable communities. WFP declared the DRC crisis a level 2 emergency in December 2013.

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Budget revision 5 to SO extends the operation by a period of six months, from July to December 2017. DRC is in the process of developing an Interim Country Strategic Plan (I-CSP), which will be effective from January 2018.  The extension in time to this SO will allow for continuation of the SO activities, pending the implementation of the ICSP in 2018, where all country office activities will be integrated.