Crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo Map
Source: OCHA/ReliefWeb

The country

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo) is a country in central Sub-Saharan Africa. The country gained its independence from Belgium in 1960; its national capital is Kinshasa. DRC borders the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, and the Republic of Congo. The Democratic Republic of Congo covers an area of 2,344,858 square kilometers. In 2026, the country has an estimated population of about 112.8 million people, making it the third most populous country in Africa after Nigeria and Ethiopia. DR Congo is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world and at the same time one of the least developed countries.

The humanitarian situation

The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are experiencing one of the world's most complex and protracted humanitarian crises. In 2026, 18.5 million people in DRC require humanitarian assistance. The country also faces one of the world's most neglected displacement crises, with over 7.9 million women, children, and men forced to flee their homes. The humanitarian situation is marked by ongoing armed conflicts, massive displacement, climate shocks, and recurrent epidemics. 

Since May 2026, a rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak is putting even more lives at risk across multiple provinces where insecurity and limited humanitarian access are complicating response efforts. The outbreak is further straining an already overburdened health system and intensifying humanitarian needs in communities affected by conflict and displacement.

As of August 2026, the Bundibugyo virus disease (BVD) outbreak in the DRC is in a phase of intense transmission. It is the largest Ebola outbreak ever reported in the country and is spreading faster than any previous outbreak.  Initially confined to one health zone in Ituri Province, the outbreak has now spread to 54 health zones across six provinces: Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uélé, Tshopo, and Bas-Uélé. A total of 4,665 confirmed cases, including 2,184 deaths, have been reported.

For decades, DR Congo has endured multiple overlapping crises driven mainly by conflict and forced displacement, both of which have had devastating consequences.  More than a hundred years later, the horrific colonization of the country by Belgian King Leopold II still impacts life in DRC. Since the end of the Second Congo War in 2003, the Central African country has experienced more than two decades of lingering armed violence.

As decades of conflict and strife continue to plague the country, the humanitarian crisis deepens. Millions have been internally displaced due to ongoing militia attacks and military operations, with particularly tragic outcomes for women and children. Conflict profoundly impacts the lives of Congolese people.

The situation is particularly dire in the conflict-affected eastern provinces of DRC, where families have lost access to their livestock and livelihoods. Armed clashes continue to disrupt food production and trade routes. Meanwhile, humanitarian access remains limited due to security risks that hinder the delivery of essential aid. The security situation in eastern DRC remains highly volatile. Human rights violations, including reprisal killings and abductions, continue to be reported.

Due to the ongoing violence, the Democratic Republic of the Congo suffers from one of the largest internal displacement crises in the world — second only to Sudan. More than 7.9 million people have been forced to flee their homes. Among them are 6.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs and IDP returnees, primarily in the eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri, as well as approximately one million refugees who have sought refuge in neighboring countries. In addition to hosting millions of IDPs, the DRC is also home to approximately 520,000 refugees from other countries, primarily from the Central African Republic, Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan.

The conflict in the eastern part of the DRC has caused a crisis affecting food insecurity, malnutrition, health, education, and access to clean water and shelter. In 2025, the humanitarian situation in the eastern provinces of DRC reached devastating levels as cyclical violence perpetrated by armed groups impacted millions of vulnerable civilians. The eastern part of DRC is home to multiple armed groups, including the Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) rebel force, the CODECO (Coopérative pour le développement du Congo) armed group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels, and Zaïre armed groups. Last year, the M23 rebel group stepped up fighting and seized large territories in North and South Kivu.

Ongoing conflict in the country is fueling hunger. Due to the conflict in the eastern provinces and the resulting large-scale displacement, the country is facing one of the world’s largest and most severe hunger crises. According to the most recent data from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), over 26.5 million people — nearly one-quarter of the Congolese population — are currently unable to meet their basic food needs.

The latest IPC update revealed that over 3.6 million children, women, and men are experiencing emergency-level food insecurity (IPC Phase 4), which indicates critical food shortages that endanger their survival without immediate humanitarian assistance. This is one of the largest numbers of people globally facing Phase 4 conditions.

In recent months, the worsening food crisis has gripped the people of DRC, where conflict, economic instability, and rising food prices have put millions of people at risk. The situation has deteriorated in the four provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Ituri, and Tanganyika, where more than 10.3 million people are experiencing crisis levels or worse, including 2.3 million in Phase 4. Internally displaced people fleeing violence remain among the most vulnerable and bear the brunt of the worsening hunger crisis.

The nutritional situation in the DRC is particularly alarming. An estimated 4.18 million children under the age of five require treatment for acute malnutrition. Of these children, more than 1.3 million are suffering or are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Additionally, over 1.5 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are projected to be acutely malnourished, further compounding health risks for mothers and children.

Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is the deadliest form of malnutrition. If left untreated, it can be fatal within weeks. Children diagnosed with SAM require immediate, intensive treatment because they are extremely vulnerable to life-threatening complications and have a high mortality rate if they receive inadequate care. Malnutrition weakens the immune system, making children more susceptible to infectious diseases.

This year's Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) calls for a total of $2.1 billion in funding from donors worldwide to provide assistance to 7.3 million vulnerable people in a country where nearly 15 million still need humanitarian aid. This figure is widely considered to be an underestimation of the actual need. The humanitarian response in DRC remains severely underfunded. As of August, only 48 percent of the 2026 HNRP has been funded.

The UN estimated that 21.2 million people required humanitarian assistance in 2025, which was a slight decrease compared to 2024. Among them were an estimated 12.4 million children. Nearly 8 million women, men, and children in the three eastern provinces of Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu were in need of humanitarian aid.  Last year's HRP was only 28 percent funded, forcing aid agencies to scale back operations. Despite major funding gaps, about 9.1 million people received at least one form of humanitarian assistance — more than 80 percent of those targeted.

The 2024 HRP for the DRC sought US$2.6 billion to provide urgently needed assistance. As of January 2025, the 2024 HRP was only 51 percent funded. In addition, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) launched the 2024 Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRP) to provide protection and assistance to Congolese refugees in neighboring countries. The RRP required $668 million to support nearly 1 million refugees and 1 million host communities, but was only 43 percent funded (as of January 2025). Despite lack of funding, operational and access challenges, humanitarian organizations provided assistance to an estimated 7.1 million people in 2024 out of 8.7 million targeted for relief aid.

The 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan for the Democratic Republic of the Congo called for $2.3 billion to provide life-saving assistance to millions of people. As of February 2024, the 2023 HRP was only 40 percent funded. The 2023 Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRP) for the Democratic Republic of Congo required $549 million. As of February 2024, the 2023 RRP was only 26 percent covered by funding.

The country is also dealing with the effects of climate change, which have exacerbated the impact of frequent flooding in many provinces of the DRC. Floods aggravate already high humanitarian needs as they severely damage infrastructure and impair basic services.

From 2023 to 2025, DR Congo experienced catastrophic flooding driven by the Congo River surging to its highest levels since 1961. This continuous climate crisis impacted a record 4.1 million people in 2023 alone, displacing over 500,000 people and killing hundreds. It went on to affect another 1.1 million people through late 2024, and in 2025, over 658,000 people were impacted by recurrent torrential rains, culminating in devastating flood disasters.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that millions of people in DRC are facing a health crisis due to escalating conflict and violence, particularly in the eastern part of the country. Mass displacement is overwhelming water and sanitation systems, putting additional strain on the population's scarce resources. Consequently, people are facing outbreaks of cholera, measles, meningitis, Mpox, and plague, all of which are made worse by severe flooding  in some parts of the country.

Democratic Republic of the Congo LocationThe security situation

For two decades, conflict has been raging in parts of the country. Human rights violations are widespread, in particular cases of sexual and gender-based violence, with sexual violence being used as a weapon of war. Sporadic and sometimes intense waves of fighting in many parts of the country, particularly in the eastern regions, confront the DRC with a complex and challenging security situation.

Presidential, legislative, and provincial elections were held in December 2018 and early 2019 across most of the country. In 2019 then, the country experienced the first transfer of power to an opposition candidate without significant violence or a coup since the DRC's independence. Opposition candidate Félix Tshisekedi was announced the election winner on 10 January 2019 and inaugurated two weeks later. The next presidential, legislative, and provincial elections were held in December 2023.

After a disputed election in December, President Tshisekedi was sworn in on January 20, 2024, for his second five-year term. The Congolese president has promised to unite the Central African country and protect lives in the conflict-torn eastern provinces. 

While the security situation improved in some areas in 2021, armed conflict and natural disasters continue to cause significant displacement in the east of the country, particularly in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri where a state of siege was declared in April 2022 due to escalating attacks. North Kivu, Ituri, and South Kivu suffered between 2021 and 2023 from an escalation of targeted attacks by armed groups against civilians, many of whom have already been displaced due to conflict and violence.

Rebel groups have fought the government and each other in eastern Congo for decades, battling for political dominance and control of the region’s rich mines. One of the root causes of many of these conflicts is the exploitation of the DRC's natural resources. Much of the instability in the region is driven by illicit mining, regional rivalries, and a proxy war between DRC’s eastern neighbors Uganda and Rwanda. 

Despite efforts to achieve peace in eastern Congo, mistrust between leaders of the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, remains a major obstacle. Neighboring Rwanda supports the M23 armed group and has reinforced its support for the M23 in 2024 and 2025. The worsening conflicts in eastern Congo have prompted countries in the region to broker two peace initiatives: the so-called Luanda Process and the Nairobi Process.

Since fighting between the Congolese army and the armed group Mouvement du 23 mars (M23) escalated in March 2022, millions of Congolese have had to flee their homes in the province of North Kivu. Since October 2023, violent clashes between members of the M23, the FARDC and coalitions of armed groups in North Kivu again intensified, forcing millions of people from areas controlled by the M23, to flee their homess, many more than once. 

Despite numerous military operations by the FARDC, often supported by MONUSCO and the Southern African Development Community Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (SAMIDRC), the situation in the eastern part of the country deteriorated in 2024. Several fragile ceasefires were in place but were never fully respected.

In 2025, the security situation in the east escalated despite an August 2024 ceasefire. On January 2, 2025, the M23 launched a new offensive, capturing territory and displacing hundreds of thousands of people in North and South Kivu in violation of the ceasefire agreement signed by the DRC and neighboring Rwanda. According to a group of UN experts, Rwanda stepped up its support for the M23, and thousands of Rwandan troops are fighting alongside the M23 in eastern DRC. This has raised fears of a full-scale war between the two East African neighbors.

In early 2025, the M23 rebel group quickly seized control of several key towns and cities, including Masisi, Minova, Sake, and the major regional capitals of Goma (North Kivu) and Bukavu (South Kivu). This escalation triggered massive displacement, forcing hundreds of thousands of people—including an estimated 1.5 million children in Goma—to flee their homes or be forcibly returned to their areas of origin. The M23 subsequently forced hundreds of thousands more to return to their areas of origin in a second wave of displacement.

Thousands of civilians were killed or injured, and at least thirteen international peacekeepers from MONUSCO and SAMIDRC lost their lives during the advance. The rebels have established "parallel administrations" in occupied territories, resulting in a severe worsening of the region's humanitarian situation.

Map of DR Congo

In 2026, violence continues to plague the war-torn eastern provinces, where attacks by armed groups, intercommunal tensions, and retaliation are forcing communities to flee and destroying livelihoods. Hostilities in North and South Kivu and Ituri have led to the deaths of thousands of civilians, forced displacement, and widespread human rights abuses, including sexual violence at the hands of armed groups.

While most of the international community's attention is focused on the deteriorating situation in North and South Kivu provinces, the humanitarian situation in Ituri province has become increasingly critical.  The Allied Democratic Forces have taken advantage of the security vacuum created by the redeployment of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to launch attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians.  Additionally, clashes have escalated between the CODECO militant group and Zaïre armed groups in Ituri province.

DRC continues to experience violence perpetrated by more than 130 armed groups active in the eastern regions. The UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) has operated in these regions since 1999, making it the largest UN peacekeeping mission in the world. The mission is authorized to use all necessary means to protect civilians, humanitarian personnel, and human rights defenders under imminent threat of physical violence, as well as to support the government's stabilization and peace consolidation efforts.

At the Congolese government's request, MONUSCO withdrew its troops from South Kivu province in June 2024. Currently, more than 60 percent of MONUSCO forces are deployed in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. There are growing concerns about what will happen to civilians after MONUSCO's full withdrawal from the eastern provinces. This raises fears about civilian protection and the prospect of an escalating humanitarianemergency.

Donations

Your donation for the Democratic Republic of the Congo emergency can help United Nations agencies, international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their local partners to rapidly provide water, food, medicine, shelter and other aid to the people who need it most.

Currently, there are only a few active appeals for the DR Congo Crisis. You may also consider making an unearmarked donation or a broader earmarked donation.

To find other organizations to which you can donate, visit: Humanitarian Crisis Relief, Refugees and IDPs, Children in Need, Hunger and Food Insecurity, Medical Humanitarian Aid, Vulnerable Groups, Faith-Based Humanitarian Organizations, and Human Rights Organizations.

Further information

Last updated: 08/16/2026

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