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Hospitals in Goma are swamped, bishop warns in peace plea as violence escalates

30 January 2025

People of Goma ‘terrified in their homes’ as humanitarian conditions worsen

Alamy

People protest in Kinshasa, in the DRC, on Tuesday, against the M23 rebels’ advances into Goma

PEOPLE in the Congolese city of Goma are “terrified in their homes”, the Bishop, the Rt Revd Martin Gordon, has said, as violence escalates and humanitarian conditions worsen.

Operations by the rebel armed group M23, which is backed by Rwanda, and Congolese Army forces have blocked key roads and closed all supply lines to Goma.

Bishop Gordon, who left Goma this week, said on Wednesday that people in the city were without power and in many areas there was no water. “The M23 seems to have control of large parts of the city,” he said. “The Congolese army are resisting in other areas. Civilians are being caught in the crossfire. Bodies are lying in the streets; 4000 prisoners have escaped.”

Camps of internally displaced persons had emptied, he said, as people fled to the city centre; churches were “filling as places of refuge”, and hospitals were “overwhelmed”.

“The price of basic food has doubled,” he continued. “Most people are terrified in their homes. Many are asking why they are being forgotten. The region is at a turning point and needs the international community to act immediately and decisively.”

Bishop Gordon has issued “The Goma call to peace”, which calls for hostilities to be stopped immediately and an existing ceasefire agreement to be respected; the restoration of power and water to the city; the withdrawal of the M23 and other forces from the DRC; and for the international community to do all that it can to bring about peace.

The Church of England Pensions Board launched an investor call, on Thursday, to support Bishop Gordon’s call for peace

“Following an urgent briefing for international investors organised by the Board following the capture of the city, the pension fund will lead investor engagement with major international companies operating in Rwanda, seeking their support for the Goma Call for Peace and for those companies to engage the Rwandan government to engage in peace talks,” a statement said. “The Board will also engage companies in key sectors with supply chains at risk of exposure to minerals from the conflict, a risk the Board has previously highlighted when warnings were issued by the US State Department in 2024.”

Supporting the call for peace, the Archbishop of the Congo, the Most Revd Ande Georges Titre, said: “Immediate aid is desperately needed for those suffering most and our cries for peace need finally to be heard and acted upon. We have suffered for far too long. We put our hope in Christ and trust in the swift response of the international community.”

Aid agencies are suspending operations in the DRC. World Vision reports that people living in Goma, or in camps near by, now face the risk of death, injury, and mass displacement, as M23 pushes to seize the city. World Vision’s head of operations for eastern DRC, David Munkley, said: “The situation is terrible. There are not only thousands of people caught in the middle, or fleeing this violent conflict, but now we can’t reach the tens of thousands of people who have previously relied on us for food and other vital support.

“My biggest fear is that we are going to see a massive escalation of children and their families on the move, and be unable to easily assist. Past spikes in violence have put children at risk of either being recruited into the armed groups, or led to increases in girls and women experiencing sexual violence.”

He called on the international community actively and immediately to get involved to prevent the conflict from potentially significantly worsening.

People were being forced to flee from the very displacement camps where they had found refuge after being driven from their homes, and had now become targets for violence, Tearfund reported on Monday. A bomb had landed the previous day on the IDP site where Tearfund had been providing water and latrines for the past 18 months.

The agency’s country director for the DRC, Poppy Anguandia, drew attention to the vulnerability of those “going from a camp where they had nothing into a city where they have even less”.

A CAFOD spokesperson reported hearing shooting in the background on the phone, after calling staff in Goma. “Women and children fleeing ahead of the conflict have arrived in the city, exhausted from their journey, to find water and electricity cut off and food prices rising. Feeder routes into Goma are now blocked by heavy fighting, leaving people trapped.”

Many had been reduced to begging on the streets, CAFOD’s DRC representative, Bernard Balibuno, said. The charity is urging all parties to ensure the continuing supply of humanitarian aid, amid concern that, while the eyes of the West have been focused on Ukraine and Gaza, millions of lives have been lost in the DRC, owing to hunger, disease, and violence.

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