400,000 children in DR Congo could die from hunger, says Unicef

 – No harvest until June –

Security in some parts of Kasai has improved recently, but food shortages will haunt the region right up until next June, because the planting seasons for 2017 have been lost, Unicef said.

“Families have little harvest from their own land and nothing to sell at the markets,” it said.

Unicef, which has been intervening in the Kasai crisis since January, also said the region’s health infrastructure had been devastated.

“Approximately 220 health centers were destroyed, looted or damaged, leading to a weakening of the health delivery system, reduced access to healthcare and an increased risk in the spread of communicable diseases like measles,” it said.

In October, the UN’s refugee agency reported that 3.9 million people had been displaced by fighting in the DRC. It declared the crisis was a “level three” emergency, the highest on the scale.

“With so many humanitarian crises worldwide, the situation in DRC is at risk of being ignored while it develops into the biggest emergency of 2018,” Mohammed Abdiker, director of operations and emergencies at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said on Tuesday, after visiting the country last week.