A link-up between Baptist chuches in Dallas (USA) and Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may provide 500 refugee families with the help they desperately need, including refugees disabled by the violence in DRC.

According to the Baptist Standard, Katakya Mutahinga, the president of the Community of Baptist Churches of Eastern Congo, has proposed that the 300 churches he represents can adopt 500 refugee families in need of food, shelter and healthcare, with the help of churches in the USA and Europe.   The African Community Church, a Baptist congregation in Dallas, may be just the answer to this request.  Its pastor, Kambale Simisi, grew up in North Kivu (DRC), so  understands the urgent needs of civilians caught up in the ongoing violence. 

The recent escalation in violence in the region has displaced as many as 2.5 million people, including widows, orphans and those disabled by the violence.  Simisi understands the important role churches play in helping those affected:

‘The churches are doing what they can to minister, but they don’t have the resources’.  He hopes to lead mission groups from the US to assist their Congolese partners in helping the refugees.

The plight of disabled Congolese refugees resurfaces with each new outbreak of violence, and violence from the latest episode continues.  This continues to impact on disabled refugees, as noted by the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes.  Mr Holmes visited the Heal Africa hospital in Goma (North Kivu) at the beginning of February, and saw those being treated there, included disabled children and female victims of sexual violence.

The displacement of civilians continues, against a background of a  joint military operation by the DRC and Rwanda against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an armed Hutu group that has been in eastern DRC since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.  This ongoing displacement not only creates new refugees, but also deepens the hardship of those already uprooted.   John Holmes acknowledges the possible danger in the future:

"We also have to work to ensure that the military operation itself does not have dreadful consequences for the civilian population”

Disabled refugees, among the most vulnerable in refugee populations, will unfortunately be most at risk until violence subsides.