The Central African Republic (CAR) is a land-locked, conflict-ridden and desperately poor country the size of France, which has gone through 30 years of economic and social decline. In 2008 it ranked 178 out 179 on the UN’s Human Development Index, making CAR one of only two African countries that have not seen any development progress since the early 1980s.

Heavily dependent on diamond and wood exports, CAR has been hit quicker and harder by the global economic crisis than most other African states. High production costs – due to small-scale methods, prohibitive transportation costs and very high costs of doing business – severely limit the competitiveness of CAR’s exports. Reductions in global demand therefore quickly translate into production cuts, layoffs and declining government revenue. The global economic crisis represents a severe risk for CAR’s fragile economy and political system.

Source: World Bank Country Assistance Strategy CAR (2009)

Heavily concentrated in the South, diamond production (in carats) declined almost 80 percent from peak to trough during the course of 2008, or 21 percent compared to 2007. Wood production declined more than 70 percent from peak to trough, or 20 percent compared to 2007. There are no reliable unemployment statistics. Yet, companies working in the South confirm that most of Central Africans previously working in mining and forestry have been laid off.

The social impact on the previously stable southern regions has been severe. Collapsing incomes have led to increasing social tensions among the unemployed population. Malnutrition rates among children have risen rapidly, as parents are no longer able to provide for their children. About 16 percent of children under five are acutely malnourished in the three most heavily affected provinces. Alarmingly, almost 7 percent are severely acutely malnourished. With the northern parts of CAR locked-down in rebellion, Continue Reading »

(KJ*) Over the last two years, humanitarian assistance has made a decisive contribution to the stabilization the Central African Republic while the country’s condition was at its most critical. Back from the brink of collapse, the benefits of peace and stability now would have to be spread much wider throughout this desperately poor country, if the patient were to recover successfully. However, while humanitarian assistance is levelling off and may well decrease in 2009, development support is still lacking too far behind to pick up the thread. The looming recovery gap now jeopardizes CAR’s fragile progress, as data from the country’s new aid management system shows.

Improving aid effectiveness

In November 2008, the Central African Republic (CAR) and its partners launched a new aid management system (DAD). Widely used in Asia but still rare in Africa, the goal of this online database is to make humanitarian and development aid more transparent, coordinated and effective. Previously, no central data source existed to help decision-makers understand who finances projects, who works in which sectors, in which locations, and where the gaps are. As in many other African states critically dependent on foreign support, the absence of reliable data was a stumbling block to improved aid effectiveness. Less than four months after the system’s launch, detailed financial, sector and geographical data for almost 300 projects is now available online. While the usual caveats on aid statistics apply (the data will not account for 100 percent of all transfers), the numbers are nevertheless already a reasonably good reflection of the realities in CAR.

Good numbers on the surface

At first sight, the recent data on aid to the Central African Republic looks encouraging. Between 2005 and 2007, total foreign assistance to CAR more than doubled from about $117m to $242m. The increase is particularly significant, given that CAR had long been a forgotten crisis. While aid to Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole went up by more than 90 percent between 1985 and 2006, it fell by almost 50 percent for CAR. During this time, the country’s development catastrophe slowly turned into a humanitarian emergency, directly affecting more than a million people and forcing up to 300,000 into displacement. CAR now ranks 178 out of 179 on the UN’s Human Development Index. More than two thirds of the population live in poverty. Reaching the Millennium Development Goals has become a distant dream. Continue Reading »

Grave violations against children are being perpetrated by all parties to the various conflicts in the Central African Republic (CAR), including rape and armed recruitment into the fighting forces, according to a United Nations report released today.

Non-State armed groups and bandits are also kidnapping children as a means of recruitment and to threaten and extort ransom from the population, while abuses against youngsters generally are committed in a climate of impunity, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes in his latest report to the Security Council on children and armed conflict in CAR.

“I call on all parties to the conflict to immediately and without precondition cease the recruitment and use of children and to identify and release to the United Nations those children already in their ranks,” he says.

Continue Reading »

An extensive multi-media campaign is being carried out in the Central African Republic to generate excitement and awareness about UNICEF’s latest vaccination campaign – one of the largest of its kind in the history of this country.

“UN agencies and non-governmental organizations run campaigns all the time, but this is a big one and we want it to stand out,” said UNICEF CAR representative Mahimbo Mdoe. “What we’re saying is – here are three preventable diseases killing a lot of children and this week we’re going to visit every corner of the country to give children and their families tools to prevent these deaths.”

The 10-day campaign will address three of the leading causes of preventable death among children in CAR: malaria, measles and diarrhoea caused by improper hygiene. Approximately 800,000 children under the age of five will be vaccinated for measles as well as given free bars of soap to help prevent diarrhoea, along with a treated mosquito net to eliminate malaria – the leading cause of death among children in this country. Continue Reading »

In Coordinated Aid Programme, 34 aid agencies ask for $116m for 2009 to fund humanitarian assistance in the Central African Republic

Pierre Holtz/UNICEF

On 19 November, John Holmes, Emergency Relief Coordinator, launched the Humanitarian Appeal 2009, with CAR being one of the countries covered by the appeal.

The country’s Coordinated Aid Programme (CAP) 2009 includes 105 projects which require funding of just over $116 million. It seeks to provide aid to 1 million Central Africans hit by the conflict. The 2009 CAP strategic priorities are to (i) deliver life-saving assistance, particularly health care and safe water; (ii) protect people struck by violence against violations of their human rights; and (iii) integrate early recovery and humanitarian action.

Ten projects to provide basic healthcare and human rights protection, as well as a humanitarian air service to enable aid workers to reach people in remote areas and transport relief items, are ranked as an immediate priority. Just over $14m are needed for these most urgent activities.

Click here to download the 2009 Coordinated Aid Programme for CAR (PDF, 2.6MB) and here for more information, including all projects and the funding status of the Coordinated Aid Programme

Once there was a fairy-tale image of the brave and noble humanitarian, who would storm into conflict zones – armed only with vaccines and sacks of food – and indiscriminately save lives, having no other impact that a strictly humanitarian one. In the mid-1990s, that image was shattered. Strikingly common-sensical, Mary Anderson laid out the idea of Do No Harm, based on the realisation that humanitarian assistance takes place within a political context, and that so-called humanitarians, in their eagerness to do good, risked exacerbating tensions and deepening conflicts. Of course, this insight was not new. As long as there have been conflicts, people in violence-ridden countries have seen foreigners appear and influence the course of events. Having them arrive in white Landcruisers with colourful flags hardly changed the essential point that, in a conflict zone, everything is political.

Pierre Holtz for UNICEF / HDPT CAR

Acknowledging that emergency aid can have unintended and potentially disastrous consequences should not, and has not, led humanitarian organisations to pack up their vaccination kits and go home. On the contrary: while the idea of Do No Harm is as relevant today as ever, there is no reason why it could not have a positive twin. This twin idea – ‘Do More Good’ – suggests that impartial and effective humanitarian action can have a positive impact beyond its primary aim of saving lives and relieving suffering, i.e. to create some breathing-space for conflict-torn communities and lay the foundations for stability and development. Just such a window of opportunity may exist today in the Central African Republic. Although this window may close fast, it does appear that positive change could be possible. Aid organisations are playing a central role in helping to bring it about. Continue Reading »

Rebel excersizing in a training camp in north-eastern CAR.

Now that years of conflict in the Central African Republic are starting to wind down,  opportunities for economic recovery have begun to open up in many parts of the north.  There are still many challenges; principle among them road banditry which places a heavy burden on trade and local economies.  However, in spite all of this hardship, the people in the north have shown remarkable resilience.

In Paoua, for example, large proportions of the local and displaced populations are now working within cooperatives, women’s groups or other associations.  Also, since late 2007, people in many parts of the country have begun returning to their villages and rebuilding their houses and livelihoods, particularly in Birao,  around Kabo, and between Ouandago and Kaga-Bandoro.

With this accelerating return home, aid organisations are helping to create economic opportunities for communities that have been roiled by violence.  To that end, micro-credit programs and support to small farm cooperatives are now available in eleven places across the country.  Additionally, 48 kilometres of dirt roads have been rehabilitated so far this year and there are plans to work on an additional 282 kilometres.

Since restarting economic activity will be key to sustaining the Central African Republic’s fragile progress, many aid organisations have planned to focus their activities on the local economy for the rest of the year.  Programmes supporting farmers, herdsmen and fisherman will help strengthen the link between humanitarian and development assistance as well.

In Paoua, women communities receive help from the
Danish Refugee Council to set up small businesses.

Most recently, humanitarian organisations were called upon to assist people ravaged by the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) near Obo on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  They acted quickly to provide  protection, basic health and education services to a weakend population.  As in the north, these emergency activities will soon be linked with early recovery projects (in road rehabilitation, for example), so that the population can start re-building better lives.

Get more details in the 2008 Coordinated Aid Programme Mid-Year Review (PDF - 2.8 MB).

Download the 2008 Consolidated Appeal Mid-Year Review (2.8MB) - PDF

People in the Central African Republic (CAR) have a reason to hope. The conflict between three militant groups and the government has ended, at least on paper. The army has ceased the worst forms of reprisals against civilians in the north and has, together with the police and justice system, committed to reform. An international peacekeeping force has deployed to the Vakaga region in the northeast, which shares a porous border with Darfur and eastern Chad. Tackling issues of chronic poverty and underdevelopment, the government has drawn up a long-term development plan and donors have started to re-engage, pledging US$ (1) 600million in development aid over the next three years. In the more immediate term aid agencies are reaching more people struck by conflict and violence than ever before with human rights protection, emergency assistance, and recovery programmes. Continue Reading »

The Food and Agricultural Organization publishes its second quarterly bulletin on its activities in the Central African Republic:

• Encouraging results for the 2007/08 market gardening counter season
• Information on the 2008 agricultural season
• Testimonies from beneficiaries of FAO programmes
• FAO representant meets ministry representatives and CEMAC commission President

Click here to download the bulletin (PDF; 299 KB)

Threats in the north of the Central African Republic are shifting. People continue to suffer from violence and a lack of water, medicines, schools and markets. While the armed conflict between the government and militant groups has ceased in the northeast and somewhat declined in the northwest,criminal gangs are wreaking havoc all over the northern and central parts of the country. Almost 300,000 Central Africans remain displaced, either within the country or as refugees abroad. An estimated third of these, some 100,000 people, have fled armed bandits who attack travellers, loot what little people have, and burn whole villages, kidnap children for ransom, and kill people at random.

The Humanitarian and Development Partnership Team (HDPT) in CAR estimates that one million people continue to endure the direct consequences of violence. In order to kick start urgent humanitarian operations, the Emergency Response Fund (ERF) provides immediate financing solutions to the humanitarian actors on the ground. Continue Reading »

HDPT’s Info Bulletin no 48 (February 18 - February 25, 2008) is out - with detailed information on current humanitarian and development activities in the Central African Republic. It contains a current overview on the most important developments and news from within and about CAR. Continue Reading »

Affected by years of relentless fighting in the North West, Central African farmers now face great difficulties to maintain their livelihood. Their seeds and tools have been destroyed by the repeated assaults of bandits, rebels and armed forces, turning the former bread basket of Central Africa into a disaster zone.

Three quarters of the Central African population work in the agricultural sector. Over the last ten years, a 90 percent drop of the cotton and coffee production has made a dramatic impact on the county’s economy.

The FAO in CAR is running emergency programs to support the neediest populations affected by the conflict in the North, and recovery programs to help rebuilding the country’s agricultural sector.

In Paoua and Bossangora, Central Africans working with the FAO talk about their achievements and their needs.

Click here to find out more about the FAO emergency programs in CAR.

The Food and Agricultural Organization publishes a new bulletin on its activities in the Central African Republic:

• A 3 million USD Emergency program to support refugees and vulnerable populations
• An ambitious programm for the development of CAR agricultural capacities
• The celebrations of the World Food Day in Bocaranga

Looking back on the achievements of 2007, the FAO bulletin sheds light on its objectives for 2008.

Click here to download the bulletin (PDF; 351 KB)

Throughout much of Sub-Saharan Africa, incomes have risen considerably since the 1980s, albeit from a very low level. Calls for increased long-term development aid are now more frequent than ever.

In the Central African Republic, however, these trends have moved in the opposite direction. Incomes have hardly risen in more than 20 years, and development aid has fallen by about 60 per cent in real terms since 1985.

While poor governance is often cited as a reason for this development, CAR does not score any worse on governance indicators than most other African countries. Continue Reading »