UN Resident Coordinator Toby Lanzer recently published a short article on the situation in CAR in The World Today, a publication of Chatham House in London. The article lays out some of the issues facing the country as it heads into a donor round table meeting in Brussels at the end of October.

Major concerns include continuing violence in the north and north-east, regional tensions and their effects on CAR, as well as the alarming spectre of the country’s mineral wealth getting caught up in surrounding conflicts. Donors, the article concludes, should treat humanitarian aid as a bridge to critical development assistance and investment, and the international community should strive to ensure that regional crises do not spill over more borders and further destabilize the region.

Click here to download the full article.

Click here for more information about Chatham House.

On 26 June 2007, 14 countries and 18 international and international financial organizations met for a first consultation of development partners on the situation in the Central African Republic. This meeting will be followed by a wider donor round table in October 2007.

During the consultation, the CAR Government presented its reconstruction strategy for the landlocked, conflict- and debt-burdened country. Government representatives also illustrated the current situation in a number of sectors, such as economy and finance, security sector reform, infrastructure, gender, education, health, rural development.

All documents and presentations for the conference can be accessed at www.car-conference.net. For the government’s reconstruction strategy see the presentation by Sylvain Maliko, Minister of Economics, Plan and International Cooperation, below.