Statement on scenes of violence against International Team engaged in the fight against Ebola in DRCongo. That was expected

Press statement on attacks against International Ebola Riposte Team in the Democratic Republic of Congo

We are so much sudden by this ugly reality and strongly condemn all forms of violence regardless where it comes and regardless the causes and regardless the actors, we strongly affirm that violence should not be used as a way of expression and no excuse can justify violence.

Cases of violence against initiatives to reposte and combat Ebola became often especially last week targeting generally Internal Team and their local implementing partners in Ituri Province and in some other parts of the country. However this was not a surprise and it was expected to happen and is likely to happen, we regret that our alerts and call for reforms and the change of strategies in the Ebola repost have been highly ignored yet the threats are real and communities are not happy.

Externalizing the Ebola riposte will not bring changes and has so many risks, as consequences we are now observing the increase of cases three months now when Ebola started, the International Experts dictated by the World Health Organization have not yet reached in many villages especially those in remote areas. In actual sense it may be a problem to establish the real statistics.

The very first scene of violence was over the dead body which community members took yet the Ebola Riposte Team wanted to handle this dead body. Regardless of the campaigns we are doing on ground, if community members are not empowered themselves to handle cases of the dead bodies, such acts of violence are likely to surface because people are suspicious that International Staffs and their local partners are fabricating cases of any person who dies and claim it was because of Ebola in order to call for more funding. This is not new because we also witnessed this during the fight against COVI19. The best way is to empower the communities to handle themselves the cases, and what makes it difficult is that the International Team is not everywhere, so community members are aware of that and are seeing how other communities are doing.

The second cases of violence was against Ambulances which were provided for Ebola riposte. Again we have alerted against this way of looking at things in Western way of doing, support is provided to people without consultations and implication but also on taking into account what they want and how they want it. For people in Ituri, the Ambulance is not the best way to intervene because they are on ground without Ambulances and there are so many parts in remote areas where Ambulances will not rich. Ambulances are viewed as luxury dictated from World Health Organization in order to justify funding but not necessarily effective address Ebola issue in their communities.

We continue calling upon all actors especially the World Health Organization and the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and all others partners to note that only a community driven response against Ebola will be most effective, communities should be supported financially, capacity training and equipped in order to respond. It is the communities to ask for ambulances if they find that there is a need, it is should be the communities to make the difference between Ebola dead bodies and normal dead bodies.

We are so much worried that the current commercialization of Ebola interventions from International Organizations may highly effect community efforts and generate serious frustrations which will result into more scene of violence.  At this time there are serious and legitimate suspicions and answered questions about available funds for Ebola riposte, where is the money, who decides about the money, how much is available, who benefit from this money among other questions. The lack of transparency and accountability to communities is also a problem which will generate scenes of violence.

We are totally opposed to the current approach that is Geneva, Kinshasa, Bunia City and then in remote areas, we have proposed an approach based in the Communities, then Bunia City, Kinshasa and then Geneva. Our appeal is not about consulting the communities but entrust the responsibilities in the communities, let the communities lead the Ebola fight.

Thanks