GOMA, 1 March 2010 (IRIN): For the many thousands of people displaced by conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kivu regions who have returned to their villages, home has its many hardships.
“Return has not always been durable, as the reduction of food rations in camps [for displaced people – IDPs] and the arrival of the new planting season rather than any improvement in security have led people to go back,” the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) stated in a 24 February report.
“Many people returned home to find their land occupied, while renewed clashes in return areas also forced people to flee again soon after their arrival home,” it said.
Across eastern DR Congo, “access to basic necessities … has deteriorated over the last year in the context of military operations and reprisals and continuing abuses against the population. The vast majority of IDPs and returnees have no access to health centers and schools, or to clean water, food, seeds, tools or building materials,” according to the report.
During 2009, according to IDMC, about a million people returned to their villages in North and South Kivu – about the same number who fled because of clashes, mainly between government forces and Rwandan Hutu rebels.
In North and South Kivu, there are 1,36 million IDPs, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
In the North Kivu capital of Goma, some 77.000 people live in IDP camps, against about twice that number two years ago.
– Many have gone back to their land, and we are getting noises that more want to return, Masti Notz, head of the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, in North Kivu told IRIN.
