Crisis watch

Myanmar refugee crisis

Zia Choudhury, CARE Bangladesh country director, says that the imminent rainy season means that Kutupalong-Balukhali camp – the most densely crowded refugee camp in the world, hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees from Myanmar – is standing at the edge of a disaster: 

The land is hilly, fragile and entirely unsuited to unplanned settlement at this scale. The shelters are tightly packed on all available land, leaving just small gaps for roads and drainage. Many of the shelters are precariously perched on very inappropriate places, including the slope of the hills. We’re deeply concerned that during cyclone and torrential rains many of the shelters will simply collapse and wash away.

Read more in this blog by Zia Choudhury

Papua New Guinea

Following the magnitude 7.5 earthquake in February, CARE has so far assisted over 3,000 people in Western and Hela provinces with items including hygiene kits, clothing, cooking utensils, mosquito nets, gardening/livelihoods tools, tarps, and medical kit. Our gender analysis of the humanitarian situation finds that women and girls are likely to be placed at particular risk due to their increased workload and caring responsibilities following the earthquake, and our ongoing response aims to be gender-sensitive and address the particular needs of women and girls.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Renewed inter-ethnic conflicts, cholera and measles epidemics, and severe food insecurity are contributing to a rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the DRC. David Bisimwa, CARE’s Emergency Coordinator in DRC, said: 

Every day, people across Congo are dying because of conflict and violence, and right now there’s not enough resources to help them all.

In neighbouring Uganda, where over 125,000 refugees from the DRC have arrived, Gloria (name changed) says:

DRC will never have peace – if there’s no war today, there’s war tomorrow.

Read more in this report published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Horn of Africa

Consecutive failed rainy seasons have eroded the coping capacities of agro-pastoralist communities in the Horn of Africa and more than 15 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia and northern Kenya continue to be in need of humanitarian assistance. CARE continues to provide food and nutrition, water and sanitation, livelihoods, and protection support across the three countries.

DRC regional crisis

More than 125,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo have arrived in neighbouring countries Burundi, Uganda and Zambia since 1 January 2017. The humanitarian response is severely overstretched and underfunded, especially in Kyangwali settlement in Uganda, where CARE is providing gender-based violence, health and hygiene support to refugees.