Violence in eastern Congo has displaced millions. Some end up in this campExBulletin

RUBAVU DISTRICT, Rwanda The first thing we noticed at Nkamira Transit Center was the fact that everywhere we looked, in every direction, there were children.

Children lying on foam mattresses, piled on the rocky ground. Children peering curiously from behind one of the long semi-permanent shelters where they live. Children singing loudly inside a large structure where they attend school.

David Rusanjonga is the manager at the camp, which is on the Rwandan side of the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, and said roughly two-thirds of the population there were children under the age of 17. Many of them arrived without their parents.

“The children, they were separated from their parents in the DRC, they don't know where they are,” Rusanjonga said. “They don't know if they're alive or not. Sometimes, by chance, the parents come later, they join.”

More than a million people in the past two years have been forced to flee their homes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo due to worsening violence, and some end up here.

The Congolese army is fighting M23, a rebel group that has operated in the region for more than a decade. The conflict is a legacy of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which began 30 years ago this month, and the ethnic tensions that fueled it.

Today, that violence has changed life in the region. Aid groups, including the UN Refugee Agency, warn of a severe humanitarian crisis. And US officials say the conflict has the potential to escalate into an all-out regional war.

Our visit to the Nkamira Transit Center provided a sense of what life is like now for people fleeing eastern Congo and arriving in Rwanda.

When we arrived, the center was almost at capacity. More than 6,500 people were inside, seeking shelter and safety.

People in this camp live in semi-permanent shelters with corrugated metal roofs and doors and walls made of white plastic sheets. Rusanjonga told us that the plastic was designed to last for six months. But some had been there for more than a year.

The Nkamira Transit Center has faced budget cuts and he said that means it sometimes has little to offer people when they arrive.

“Sometimes, not often, but sometimes we wait on people without a blanket to offer,” he said. “Most people here don't have mattresses. They sleep on mattresses on the floor, and this is a very rocky environment.”

“So it's hard and it's heartbreaking to take in people like that without much to offer.”

We walked through a part of the camp that houses the latest arrivals.

In a long, makeshift shelter, we met Sylvie Migabo, a 27-year-old woman who fled the Democratic Republic of Congo after her husband was killed.

She is from Masisi, in the North Kivu province of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. She first fled to Goma, the capital of the region. But she said she was told she might not be safe there because of her family's ethnic ties.

“I'm much better here than where I was. At least it's peaceful,” she told us through a translator. “I'm not afraid that someone can come and kill me.”

Migabo has four children. The three older children peered around a door as we spoke, and the fourth, a baby, was strapped to the back.

“We are safe here,” she said. “Even at night we are not afraid”.

In the same temporary structure, we met Yvette Kamariza, 38 years old. As we talked, it was raining and she wrapped herself in a purple and yellow blanket.

She and her six children fled on foot, she said, after soldiers came to her house and took the cows.

“When they took the cows, I thought, 'It's over,'” she said, speaking through an interpreter. “Because next time it won't be the cows. I thought they were coming for me and my kids.”

Kamariza told us she had no idea how long she would stay in the refugee camp or where she might go next.

“I'm happy now that I'm here. I had a very good sleep last night and they gave me food, a blanket and a mat to sleep on,” she said. “And I don't hear the sound of bullets, nor gunshots.”

The challenges facing people fleeing violence in eastern Congo and coming here to the transit camp are daunting, Rusanjonga said, their future uncertain.

“Many of the people here, their homes in the DRC were burned, destroyed. Even if it ends today, they still have nowhere to go,” he said. “If they go back, they have to start from scratch.”

And it's not just livelihoods that have been destroyed, Rusanjonga says there are also emotional scars: “Some women here were raped. Some became pregnant after being raped by the militia. These are the kinds of stories I hear every day.“

Despite the growing humanitarian need, there is little sign that the conflict will end soon, amid a recent uptick in fighting between the M23 rebels and the Congolese army in the mineral-rich region.

of United States and the UN have condemned Rwanda's support for M23, a group sanctioned by the US government. However, Rwanda denies any connection and the country's President, Paul Kagame, claims his country's right to defend itself from regional violence.

And it is that violence that keeps people coming to the camp.

Rusanjonga told us that whenever new refugees from eastern Congo arrive, the workers do everything in their power to take care of them.

What they cannot do, however, is change what is happening across the border in eastern Congo. And this change, he said, will require an international response.

“This will require a collective responsibility, especially the international community. If they leave it to the DRC alone or to Rwanda alone, I don't expect much will be done,” he said.