Farmers in a breadbasket town in eastern Congo who previously fled heavy fighting are facing new challenges as they return to tend fields now under rebel control, a phenomenon playing out across the war-hit region.
The unprecedented advance by Rwandan-backed M23 rebels, part of a decades-long conflict rooted in the Rwandan genocide, has forced 1.2 million people from their homes in North and South Kivu provinces since January, according to the International Organization for Migration.
During the same period, some 1.8 million people – more than 350,000 households – have returned to homes they had earlier vacated, the U.N. agency says. Many had little choice after M23 dismantled displacement camps upon seizing Goma, eastern Congo’s largest city, in late January.
More than 60,000 people fled Kibumba during earlier fighting, but 59,700 have recently returned, according to government and U.N. figures.
Some told reporters their homes had been destroyed by bombs and they lacked seeds to replant their fields.
“The situation for them is very precarious, because they are not getting much help,” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told reporters after speaking to families in the region.
