The HDPT CAR

The Humanitarian and Development Partnership Team (HDPT) unites all organizations working to alleviate the humanitarian and development crisis in the Central African Republic: United Nations agencies, the Red Cross Movement, NGOs and other organizations.

These organizations collaborate on humanitarian and development strategies and work together when implementing projects. Read our Aid page for a list of major international aid organizations working in the country. For more info on the current crisis in CAR go to the Country page.

Why we started the HDPT CAR

For different (and good) reasons, humanitarian and development assistance are often done seperately. Yet, bringing all humanitarian and development partners together is critical in the case of the Central African Republic. The current humanitarian crisis is in many ways the product of over 20 years of under-development. The average Central African is today worse off than he or she was two decades ago. Over 67 percent of the population now lives on less than a dollar a day. Since autumn 2005, a rebellion has gripped the country’s north and has forced about 291,000 people to flee their homes. One million people have been affected by the violence.

Unlike in neighbouring Sudan and Chad, CAR’s Human Development Index (HDI) has been declining for decades. The Central African Republic now ranks 172 out of 177 on the UN’s Human Development Index. Almost nowhere in the world is therefore uniting all efforts more urgent than here: Working together to help the Central African population emerge from poverty.

This website and our intranet

This website was set up to explain the humanitarian and development crisis in CAR to a wide audience. Many non-professionals have hardly heard about the Central African Republic before, which is why this site focusses on accessible maps, photos, and multimedia.

If you are a humanitarian and development professional and require more in-depth and technical info on the country and organizations working here, please use our intranet. There you’ll find all the contacts, reports, maps, data, tools and forms you need. Getting an account for the intranet is very very easy, check our intranet page.

More info and contact

If you would like to know more about the country, organizations or you are looking for a particular contact, please write to info[at]hdptcar.net. We will forward your request to the right person.

You can find the key contacts for organizations working in CAR on our Aid page. Hundreds of other contacts are on the intranet.

For acronym insiders: IASC Country Team, HCPT, HDPT, :-S ?

If you are a humanitarian professional and wonder whether there exists an IASC Country Team in CAR, then the answer is: the HDPT is the IASC Country Team - the United Nations Country Team, the Red Cross Movement and NGOs working together.

We have not adopted the new acronym HCPT (Humanitarian Community Partnership Team) for what used to be IASC Country Teams.

Unlike in other contexts, we are integrating humanitarian and development work to improve collaboration and our assistance to the population of the Central African Republic. Therefore: Humanitarian and Development Partnership Team - HDPT CAR.

More info on humanitarian and development collaboration

• For the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the inter-agency forum for coordination, policy development and decision-making involving the key UN and non-UN humanitarian partners, click here.
• For the United Nations Development Group (UNDG), set-up by the Secretary General to improve the effectiveness of the UN’s development efforts at the country level, click here.
• For the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, click here.
• For global NGOs networks, check the sites of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), the American Council for Voluntary International Action (InterAction), or the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR).