Governance
Aug 24th, 2008 by Brock Boddie UNDP CAR
Ever since the Central African Republic achieved independence in 1960, its political life has been strongly characterised by instability of its political institutions, marked by 15 coups d’état. Human rights violations are a constant issue – aggravated by the capacity of the institutions of justice and security. The weakness of public finance has also seriously undermined attempts at progress at maintaining a stable government.
Since a multi-party democratic system was created in 1991, some forty political parties have been set up, many of which lack a real political programme. This issue is echoed in most of the governments institutions which also suffer from: (i) a lack of any formal process and tools to implement policy; (ii) the ability to critically analyse and generate workable solutions in politics and in everyday life; (iii) and the basic human and financial resources needed to function properly.
From a human rights perspective, CAR has seen frequent violations throughout its history. Various delegations of the United Nations, Human Rights Federation (FHR) and national organisations have reported a string of human rights violations that have continued over the past 15 years. These have been particularly bad during the many rebellions and attempted coups d’état.
Continued institutional failure in the organisations charged with promoting respect for human rights and justice has clearly exacerbated these issues. These failures are driven, fundamentally, by a lack of observation and enforcement of the law. This too boils down to an issue of capacity in the institutions charged with this responsibility. Material or infrastructural constraints on justice, especially in the provinces; the inadequacy of human resources, in both quantity and quality; institutional weaknesses and the non-enforcement of laws and legal rulings; and the courts’ inertia and weakness in enforcing rulings all conspire to create an extremely weak human rights framework.
These issues are echoed in public administration, which is best characterised by serious dysfunction. This dysfunction is ultimately the reason for the inefficiency of public services. The deterioration of public services is more pronounced in the provinces, and more specifically in areas affected by conflict. Moreover, pillaging and destruction during crisis periods have also reduced the range of public services, notably in basic state service sectors, such as education and health.
From the public finance perspective, recovery has been slow and painful. The principal issues are a severe lack of investment in infrastructure, salary arrears, and other budget imbalances that have not encouraged growth, much less poverty-reduction. Furthermore, the budget still has a major deficit, despite the recovery efforts under way. As such, debt is also a critical issue, hurting CAR’s public finances, even with the recent write-offs granted by the World Bank, ADB, European Union and other countries that are well-disposed towards CAR, notably France.
However, CAR has identified and begun to move on several strategies to address many of the aforementioned issues. These include: promoting a culture of democracy and peace; promoting the rule of law; improving community participation; improving the delivery and quality of public services; cleaning up public finances; and setting up secondary development centres (other than the nation’s capital, Bangui) as bases for local development. Most recently, the government has begun an inclusive political dialogue to help bring about peace with the rebels in the north of country. Provided the talks are successful, this should free the government up even further to focus on the critical tasks at hand.
For further information on governance in CAR, please read:
