The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is Central Africa’s largest country with a surface area comparable with Western Europe, and one of the world’s most resourced countries. As a primary producer, its economy is made up of agriculture, fishing, mining, forestry and the informal sector which all account for its internal economy and export. The country is fragile and the eastern part is the most vulnerable. The Islamic State (IS), a terrorist group from the Middle East, has made an introduction while other armed groups continue to operate. The conflict situation is leveraged to employ child (cheap) labour for mining—about 40,000 children— and sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) is rampant. The number of people killed in the first half of 2020 is about three times that of what was recorded within the same time frame in 2019. Over 4.5 million people have been internally displaced: 1.6 million from Ituri, 1.9 million from North Kivu, and 1 million from South Kivu provinces. While some armed groups in South Kivu pledged to end the crisis in their controlled areas, the conflict has intensified in Ituri and North Kivu provinces as of September 2020.
