Help dialogue at all levels about refugees in DRC

Thank you so much for the support, refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo did not participate in the Global Refugee Forum Summit but we partnered with our fellow refugees from other countries.

We came to you to seek your support in order to ensure that refugees and the entire civil society in the Democratic Republic of Congo participate for the first time in the international conference on refugees. But again this did not happen because as you can see, we did not raise the necessary money we wanted, secondly we did not get accreditation from UNHCR and lastly we did not have the necessary travel documents both to refugees and Congolese Nationals within the Civil Society.

However for the first time in the history of this country, the event of the Summit reached in the hears of most of the decision makers and the summit which was supposed to done in secret as far as the Democratic Republic of Congo was concerned became more a public issue among political leaders and the civil society who were involved. Through advocacy finally UNHCR had to make public announcements about this summit.

Once again through strong advocacy we put in place finally the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent a delegation to Geneva and for the first time again in history of this country, it was made public that Rwandans were among the DRC Delegation to the Summit. It is for us a great move to see that at least now we know and we help the world to know who are those ones taking poor decisions against refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this was one among the areas where over the years we lacked clear information. We strongly regret that Rwanda who is oppressing refugees in DRC is also at the same time the one to represent them in Geneva, we were highly shocked to observe that Rwanda infiltrated the whole refugee regime in DRC, and that needs to be corrected as soon as possible so that refugees in DRC can feel safe.

The money so far raised will be used to organize a Press Conference just after these general elections in DRC towards the end of January 2024, where various issues about conference will be raised and discussed.

The next move is to work on a strong advocacy programme towards issues of refugees at all levels in DRC through dialogues at the community levels, provincial level and national level, this again will be the very first initiative in DRC’s history, at the same time, we should empower refugees in leadership.

Through this fundraising we intend to involve so much the media and community leaders in order to have issues of refugees being discussed and not left behind.