ROME, Italy (AFP)— Almost one in four people in the Democratic Republic of Congo face acute food insecurity with conflict having displaced millions of people, a report by UN agencies and several NGOs said Monday.

Some 25.6 million people have been put at risk by a “combination of factors, including conflict, soaring food prices and transport costs, as well as the prolonged effects of various epidemics”, according to the report, including the latest mpox outbreak.

Natural disasters and flooding have made the situation worse in some areas, according to the report which covers the second half of 2024.

Published by the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the report estimates that some 3.1 million people were already facing critical levels of food insecurity amid high levels of acute malnutrition.

Among obstacles to food production, the report further points to diseases affecting farmers’ crops, the difficulty many of them have to invest and poor road infrastructure.

Access to drinking water is also an issue in the country of some 110 million plagued by fighting in the troubled east.

“Armed violence and competition for resources have caused massive damage on rural livelihoods and infrastructure, disrupting essential agricultural production,” added Rein Paulsen, director at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Office of Emergencies and Resilience.

Displaced populations in northeast DRC are particularly hard-hit, amid an insurgency led by the largely Tutsi M23 rebel group rebellion backed by Rwanda.

The provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu are now home to “more than 80 percent” of the currently displaced populations, notes the IPC. The DRC has 6.4 million displaced people, according to the latest figures published by the UNHCR in September.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said it was also concerned about increasing insecurity following the withdrawal of a UN stabilisation mission in the country’s South Kivu province last June.

MONUSCO peacekeepers are also expected to withdraw from North Kivu and Ituri, with the report’s authors warning of similar concerns for those regions.

Inter-communal conflicts over land in the country’s northeast have forced countless thousands of people to abandon their homes, depriving them of means of subsistence.