Absolutely. I wouldn't have the know-how to tell you exactly which regions are difficult and which ones aren't. I remember in 2017, at the height of the violence in Kasai region, people couldn't get in to get water and food to the displaced people because the situation was so tense and after the UN investigators were killed, NGOs decided to be a little more concerned.
For a very long time, there was this sense that if you were a humanitarian organization, a UN organization, and even a western researcher in general with white skin, you could navigate this space because you would not be seen as a target. That has changed dramatically in the past year, starting, I think, to a certain extent with the assassination of the two UN investigators, which has made a lot of humanitarian organizations rethink the safety of their employees.
The last thing you want to see in the Congo is what you saw in South Sudan where humanitarian workers ended up being targeted for food and water and medicine, which resulted in the death of a lot of humanitarian workers. I know for a fact that in some places it's been difficult. A lot of these organizations operate out of Goma and they assess the security situation depending on how things change. Sometimes you have operations in Beni, sometimes you don't. When the military pulls out of Beni, things calm down and that may be seen as an opportunity to go.
It's definitely affected the way in which NGOs and humanitarian organizations respond; where they're willing to go. The safety of international aid workers and international organization employees has changed tremendously in the past 12 months. It's leading them to recalculate where they send people, where they do not. Unfortunately, the delay in that thinking and cost-benefit analysis makes people even more vulnerable.