Humanitarian crisis in Kasai region, DR Congo

Since August 2016, some 1.3 million people in the country have been displaced within the DRC by the violence that has grown out of a local rooted conflict, while another 30,000 have fled to Angola.

The Kasai region is one of the DRC's poorest, and usually far off the radar of politicians and diplomats in distant capital, Kinshasa. In April 2016, tensions rose between the national government and the local Kamuina Nsapu militia, named after a hereditary chief in Kasai-Central province. After the chief, some of his followers and several members of the security forces were killed on August 12, 2016, violence broke out, pitting the militia against national government forces. Fighting rapidly spread from Kasai-Central to neighboring Kasai, Kasai-Oriental, Lomami and Sankuru provinces.