• MONUSCO base in Duru village, Haut Uele province. Soldiers from the Moroccan battalion are preparing to escort a UNHCR convoy to Bitima, a village near the South Sudan border where 600 refugees have fled from Western Equatoria.

  • Mohamed,22, et Moussa,19, washing in Dungu river in northern DR Congo. Moussas father fled from south Soudan in 1998. When his father went back, he stayed in Congo with his congolese mother.

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  • Victoria, 16, Justine, 14, Jacinta, 14, Tamelego, 7, Hellen, 6 and Emmanuel 16 a family of refugees from South Sudan who fled here to Dungu in Soith Sudan, fetch water from the well near the home of the Congolese family that has taken them in.

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  • Victoria, 16, Justine, 14, Jacinta, 14, Tamelego, 7, Hellen, 6 and Emmanuel 16 are from South Sadan and being registered as refugees in Dungu Town in Congo. They fled from South Sudan without their parents. Their father is still in South Sudan, Their mother was shot dead in Deember 2015. 'The day that war started, our father was not with us, so we could not know where we can go'.

  • Dungu-15

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  • Faustina Joseph with her five month baby, born in South Sudan. The baby is sick and she has no money to go to the hospital. Philip, her husband, died in an attack 'They came to our house and ask for money - I was at the neighbour’s place. When he tried to escape, he was shot right at the door, pushed inside and the door locked after him and he was burned with the house'.

  • Saint Daniel Comboni pediatric Clinic in Dungu. Justine Underete, 22, with her sick daughter Fozia, 15 months. She fled from South Soudan with her two daughters. 'The fighting broke out at night when my husband had travelled, there were gunshots very close, they even burnt the neighbour’s house, they were shooting at random everywhere'.

  • Sister Angelique, winner of the Nansen Award in 2013 for her work with 2,000 women and girls who were victims of LRA, giving communion at the Sunday mass in Dungu Cathedral.

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  • Congolese military keep an eye on South Sudanese refugees during the registration by UNHCR in Bitima village. Since November, thousands of refugees have fled from Western Equatoria to northern DRC.
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  • Congolese soldiers on duty in Duru village in northern DRC close to the border with South Sudan, beside a road used by South Sudanese refugees fleeing fighting in Yambio Western Equatoria.

  • UNHCR staff proceeding to the registration of six hundred South Sudanese refugees in Bitima village, under the protection of MONUSCO and Congolese soldiers.

  • Dungu Town. South Sudanese families going back to their Congolese hosting homes, after being registered by the UNHCR staff as refugees in DRC.

  • Yunes fled from Yambio village in South Soudan with her husband Ali baba and their six kids. After seeing attacks and rapes in her neigberhood, she decided to flee despite the fact that she just had given birth. After a terrible trip, without food and beeing sick, they arrived to the congolese border, where the soldiers took them the few money they had. Today, she is plaiting congolese woman to earn money.

  • Joyce Mibere, 48, a South Sudanese refugee in Bitima village in northern Congo. Her house in South Sudan was burned by LRA rebels. They took her husband and two brothers. 'I was with the children outside. I was on my way back to the house and I saw my husband already tied down. I also saw my two brothers tied down and the were being beaten. One of the LRA who was on guard moving around the house saw me after I realized he has seen me I had to escape for my life'.

  • Refugees shelters in Bitima village. Six hundred refugees from South Sudan have found shelter in this small congolese village nearby the border. Families, mostly woman and children have fled the conflict that erupted around Yambio and other areas of Western Equatoria. They have no place where to go, and no more money to go further.

  • A kid playing in a former cotton industrial plant in Dungu.Haut Uele province, Nothern DRC.

  • Father Emmanuel, Dungu - LRA figthers operating in this area of northern Congo came to take money fro this Catholic church and its priests. When they refused, the rebels threw a grenade into the priests`accommodation. Since the 2008 attack, it has not been possible to repair the damage. South Siudanese reguees are now fleeing war at home and coming here.

  • MONUSCO security threat assessment level panel, Dungu Town, Haut Uele province, DRC. Since 2008 the LRA rebels have not come close to town, but there is always a threat in the countryside.

One evening while he was still celebrating the birth of his first son a week earlier, Philip Bati answered a knock on the door at home in Yambio in South Sudan.

Expecting well-wishers, instead he found men with guns on his doorstep, demanding money. It had been an expensive week since his son’s birth, and Philip, 35, was broke. He had no chance to plead for his life.

“He was shot right at the door, since he had nothing to give them,” says Faustina Joseph, Philip’s wife. She was next door at the time, showing off the baby to the neighbours. “They pushed his body inside, blocked the door, and set fire to the house, burning him with it.”

Yambio, the large town in southern South Sudan where the couple lived, is far from the swamps and savannahs to the north and east that have been ravaged in the country’s two-year rebellion. That fighting, between its government and forces loyal to its vice-president, has killed 10,000 people and driven 2.3 million from their homes, stoking catastrophic hunger.

http://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2016/3/573c80be4/escaping-the-horrors-of-home.html