UN aid agencies are struggling to access provinces overrun by Rwandan-backed M23 rebel fighters earlier this year, although dramatic funding shortfalls for humanitarian work have also contributed to the dire situation. Kigali has always denied providing military support to the group.

Aid could be delivered more easily if air access was restored, PAM insisted, because two airports in the M23 areas “have been closed virtually since the end of January… we urgently request that a humanitarian air corridor be established,” said Cynthia Jones, PAMCountry Director for the DRC.

The alert follows the publication of a report by UN-backed food insecurity experts in Integrated food safety phase classification (IPC) platformwarning that almost 25 million people are experiencing high levels of food insecurity, rated IPC3 on a scale of one to five, with five indicating famine.

This includes an alarming three million people facing “emergency” levels of hunger – IPC4 – a number that is “rising” and is “almost double since last year”, Ms Jones said.

“What does this mean for families? This means they skip their meals, thereby depleting all the goods in their household. They sell their animals“, she said, speaking by video from Kinshasa to journalists in Geneva.

According to the UN agency, “people are already dying of hunger” in parts of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ms Jones noted that fighting between M23 militiamen and DRC government forces continues, causing further displacement and people “forced to leave their homes again and again”.

In the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, this left an estimated 5.2 million people displaced “including 1.6 million who were displaced this year alone.”making the DRC one of the largest displaced persons crises in the world,” added the WFP official.

Despite worsening hunger, funding for lifesaving humanitarian action is drying up and the UN agency has been forced to reduce the number of people it helps, from around a million at the start of the year, to 600,000 today.

“We will only be able to support a fraction of those who need it” Moving forward, Ms Jones said, in an appeal for $350 million to support emergency food and nutrition assistance over the next six months. “Without this, we will have to make further cuts [assistance] even more, up to 300,000 people, which represents only 10 percent of the three million people in need.”

Without a significant increase in funding, the WFP has warned of a “total breakdown of the pipeline” of aid by March 2026.

“This means a complete cessation of all emergency food aid to the eastern provinces. »

The severe funding gap has also had an internal impact on the agency. “We are starting to close downtown offices, we are reducing our footprint, the number of employees and juggling how to maintain operational capacity to deliver in a very complex environment,” Ms Jones explained.

And yet, humanitarian aid remains vital for displaced people in the eastern provinces, including North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri and Tanganyika, as vital services have been closed amid persistent insecurity.

“The banks are closed, there is no money available and this has had a major impact on the population and the humanitarian response,” Ms Jones said. “This has devastated livelihoods and truly put the food security of those affected in extremely dire circumstances. »

As the conflict drags on, families seek refuge in urban centers like Ituri, where host communities are already struggling to get by. Equally worrying is the fact that millions of subsistence farmers forced from their homes or too fearful to access their land missed the planting season this year.

“Women, children, men have just suffered devastating sequences of violence perpetrated by non-state armed groups and fleeing the conflict. They are tired, exhausted and need peace,” insisted Ms. Jones.