Reinforcing the impact of our interventions through a comprehensive analysis of vulnerabilities

In 2010, ACTED DRC began a restructuring and strategic rethink of its intervention in a country with a changing and diverse context. Many evaluations were therefore conducted in ACTED’s traditional areas of intervention as well as in areas with a strongly impacted humanitarian situation, deprived of relief actors. Methodology and expertise capitalization has been another aspect of ACTED’s intervention oriented towards our beneficiaries, partners and national staff. Restructuring work has thus helped ACTED emphasize the relevance of its actions in 2010, which have covered a wide array of activities including food security, livelihood and water sanitation and hygiene improvements, or community infrastructure rehabilitation.

An increased consideration of vulnerability in beneficiary targeting

As the crisis in DRC is taking a long and sustained turn, poverty and exactions by armed groups are weakening populations’ social fabric and capacity for resilience. Beneficiaries are therefore no longer being targeted by status (e.g. displaced, returnees, host families, etc.), but increasingly by proneness to vulnerability. In this context, ACTED set up a program aimed at promoting food security for the most vulnerable displaced and local populations in the Shabunda Territory in Southern Kivu. In partnership with the World Food Program, ACTED has led door-to-door socio-economic surveys in high population movement areas in order to build up lists of beneficiaries and food distributions in South Kivu on the basis of households’ food vulnerability. In that regard, many surveys have been conducted in Southern South Kivu, in Shabunda Territory, but also in the Province Orientale of North-East DRC where inhabitants fall victim to almost daily attacks from armed opposition forces, particularly the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), or in the Equateur province, North-West DRC, where inhabitants who fled fighting late 2009 and early 2010 are trying to resume a normal life. Evaluations have helped ACTED identify populations’ vulnerabilities and their causes, and to design interventions based on this analysis.

Taking part in the country’s stabilization and reconstruction

If DRC still has areas needing emergency interventions linked to populations’ extreme vulnerability, it also seems essential to take part in the country’s stabilization and reconstruction. Therefore, as the country’s stability depends on returnees’ and repatriates’ reintegration into the socio-economic fabric, ACTED has implemented reinsertion support programs, mainly through income generating activities in Northern Katanga. Besides, allowing displaced and returnee populations to reintegrate also necessitates improving universal access to natural resources, particularly water. ACTED has thus developed water, sanitation and hygiene programs in displaced, returnee and repatriate host areas in order to limit epidemic outbreaks and to ease a peaceful Northern Katanga/South Kivu cohabitation.

In order to actively participate in the country’s stabilization effort, ACTED has used its experience in road rehabilitation by finishing the 141 kilometer Baraka-Fizi-Minembwe section using public works equipment. The landlocked nature of Eastern DRC has been limiting economic development and exacerbated insecurity caused by armed militias.

Responding to vulnerable populations’ needs in areas forgotten by humanitarian workers

Following recent evaluations, ACTED is focusing on areas forgotten by aid workers and where populations are particularly vulnerable. In this regard, ACTED continues actions in Shabunda Territory (in the North-West of South Kivu province) and intervenes in Province Orientale’s Haut Uele districts and the Makanza Territory in Equateur province. ACTED has begun its interventions in these areas by improving access to basic services (hydraulic works, road infrastructure, etc.). ACTED is also striving to give vulnerable populations the means to keep up their own livelihoods through food security programs and community infrastructure works. This will allow a reinjection of funds into the local economy through Cash for Work activities. In parallel, ACTED is extending its involvement in the country’s reconstruction and stabilization programs, through school construction in Equateur, the poorest and long forgotten province in DRC.