Renewed conflict has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Central African Republic

20 August 2021

Since December 2020, there has been a resurgence in the conflict between government forces and armed groups in the Central African Republic (CAR). In recent months the situation has become extremely volatile in many rural areas across the country.

Insecurity caused by the fighting and fear of attacks have forced many to flee towards larger towns. The violence has also severely impacted the ability of organisations to provide healthcare.

CAR: Conflict hits the countryside

Naodia was at home, about to sleep, when the first bullet struck her in the abdomen. The shooting soon shattered the window next to the bed where she was lying with her two-year-old daughter. They hurriedly looked for safety next to Naodia’s husband and other two children, who were already sleeping on the floor. Soon after that, the attackers set their house on fire.

Naodia, 25, is from Beltounou, a village on the outskirts of Kabo town, in northern CAR, close to the border with Chad. As in many other parts of CAR, this area has seen a significant rise in violence that has, once again, spread throughout the country. CAR already had some of the poorest health indicators of any country in the world.

According to her neighbours, on the evening of 23 June, eight men armed with automatic weapons attacked Beltounou for about an hour. Four people were killed, four others were injured and 15 houses were burnt to the ground. Most of the 2,000 inhabitants fled in the aftermath of the attack.

Naodia. “We left the house in flames and hid in a nearby forest. I could barely walk; I had pain throughout my body, not only because of the gunshot wound, but also because I was four months pregnant. My husband got hold of some bicycles and we started the journey to Kabo in the middle of the night.”

It took them three hours to cover the 13 kilometres from Beltounou to Kabo, along a dirt road littered with water-logged potholes left by the ongoing rainy season’s frequent storms. “My husband carried the children and one of my brothers carried me. It was very difficult and we suffered a lot,” says Naodia as she recovers from surgery at the MSF hospital in Kabo. “At least I am alive, but we lost everything we had. I don’t even have my own clothes now.”

Like most of her neighbours who also fled Beltounou, Naodia and her family are staying in Kabo, a town of over 60,000 people, a fifth of whom have been displaced from other areas. Most settled here following earlier periods of violence, but newly uprooted communities have been pouring in steadily since April.

From attacks on towns to insecurity in rural areas

In late December, a newly formed coalition of non-state armed groups launched an offensive against the government of CAR amid fraught elections that ratified Faustin-Archange Touadéra as president.

The coalition combined armed factions that in previous years had fought against each other. They managed to take temporary control of some major towns and, in January, even reached the outskirts of the capital, Bangui. However, later in the year government and allied forces regained control of the semi-urban areas and pushed the armed opposition into the countryside.

The current situation in rural areas around towns in CAR has become extremely volatile, due to frequent clashes between government forces and armed groups, attacks on villages and exactions against people.

On a late-June morning, the noise and cries of dozens of babies waiting with their young mothers to be vaccinated at a health centre in Farazala, a small town a couple of hours from Kabo, offers a false impression. Faya*, a local health worker here, claims that far fewer people are now showing up for medical appointments.

“Before, there were more people coming from the nearby villages, but this has decreased because of the insecurity,” he says. “Women who live just four or five kilometres away are now giving birth at home instead of coming here. Some people are too afraid to even work in their fields or to fish and hunt. In some cases, the fields have actually been destroyed.

“We used to transfer a lot of patients between Farazala and Kabo through a system of motorbike riders put in place by MSF, but this is not easy now.” Faya recalls that, as clashes started, members of the armed groups took many of the motorbikes from the people. Later, when government and allied forces regained control of this territory, the use of these vehicles on some of the main roads was restricted, under the belief that people using the motorbikes could be fighters.

In the areas where motorbikes are able to move around, riders delivering lifesaving drugs and transporting sick and wounded patients to hospital have sometimes been attacked, injured and robbed at gunpoint. These acts of violence are usually attributed by the warring parties to uncontrolled elements.

Community health workers, trained to treat common diseases, including malaria and diarrhoea, screen children for malnutrition and refer critical cases to the hospital, have also been threatened and assaulted in rural areas.

Access to healthcare constrained

The ongoing insecurity has forced our teams to periodically suspend some medical activities in the areas around Kabo and other towns, including Batangafo, Bambari and Bria. This has included at times supervision visits, patient referrals and the work of some community health workers, which is particularly concerning during the rainy season, when cases of life-threatening diseases, like malaria, peak.

At the same time, MSF hospitals in the towns have seen an increase in the number of patients in need of treatment as more displaced people arrive. “We also see more patients with injuries caused by violence, particularly sexual violence,” says Benjamin Collins, MSF medical team leader in Kabo.

A life of repeated displacement

Over the last eight months, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. According to the UN, over 1.4 million people in CAR have now been forced from their homes, nearly a third of the total population, with half now refugees in neighbouring countries.

One of these newly displaced is Tanguina Chela. At the end of May, she fled from her village of Gmganga, along with her husband and three children. Most of Gmganga’s 200 inhabitants left following a rise in violence and fears that, with the progress of government and allied forces, armed opposition groups would retaliate against local communities accused of collaboration.

TANGUINA CHELA - DISPLACED WOMAN FROM GMGANGA

Throughout my life I have suffered a lot... I have been on the move a long time due to the war... I have lost my belongings, my farmland, everything… I have children, but I don’t even know how I will feed them.

“I left everything I had there. Now I have no food and I have to beg to get any,” says Tanguina.

Sadly, none of this is new to her. This is the third time she has been forcefully displaced. The previous times were in 2007 and 2012.

“Throughout my life I have suffered a lot. Since I was seven years old. The same story always repeats itself. I have been on the move a long time due to the war,” says Tanguina. “I have lost my belongings, my farmland, everything… I have children, but I don’t even know how I will feed them.”

Tanguina is now in one of the settlements for displaced people in Kabo, called site B. The coordinator of the site, Gotologue Auguste, estimates there are over 4,200 people living there.

At a water point, children and women with babies on their backs take turns to pump water into their jerry cans. Not far away, some people listen to a song in Sango composed by a Bangui music band encouraging people to wash their hands with soap amid the coronavirus pandemic, but few people wear face masks in the area.

Nearby, children play with tyres and a football made of a jumble of plastic; teenagers carefully prepare small teabags for sale and cook some pieces of meat over a coal fire. Some women prepare food in metallic cooking pots over open fires.

Site B is now largely indistinguishable from the rest of Kabo. Most of the hundreds of small, round houses, made of sun-dried bricks with grass roofs, have been there for years. As people vacate the houses, they are quickly taken by newly arrived displaced people like Tanguina, who was given a one-room hut.

Little hope for a change

Something similar happens with site C, another settlement for displaced people situated nearby. Hawa Ahmat has been here since 2013, when violent clashes between the Séléka and Anti-balaka armed groups and retaliations from both against communities engulfed PK13, her neighbourhood in Bangui.

“At that time, I lost a lot of my family; my dad, brother, several nephews,” says Hawa. Around 1,000 people like her were evacuated on trucks by the International Organization for Migration. Some went to Moyenne Sido and others arrived in Kabo.

“Before, we earned a good living as merchants. We even used to go to Ndjamena, in Chad, to buy clothes, carpets, perfume and other things, and sell them in Bangui. But now I barely have anything,” says Hawa. “I try to do small jobs, like cleaning people’s houses or selling firewood, to survive.”

Despite her memories of the events that made her leave, Hawa misses Bangui and one day she would like to return, but this seems unlikely in the near future. “Even if I am an optimist, I don’t know where the solution to our problems lies. I feel pain seeing my children grow up uneducated, without having the chance to go to school. This is no future at all,” she says.

1. The name was changed to preserve anonymity

Original article

Central African Republic: Nearly 370,000 children now internally displaced amidst ongoing violence – highest number since 2014

UNICEF warns large-scale population displacement leaves children at heightened risk of grave child rights violations, including recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups

27 April 2021

BANGUI, 27 April 2021 – An estimated 738,000 people, half of whom are children, are now internally displaced across the Central African Republic (CAR) as a result of ongoing violence and insecurity. This is the highest level of child displacement in the country since 2014, and UNICEF is warning of the mounting risks for children, including exposure to sexual and physical violence, recruitment and use by armed forces and groups, increasing rates of malnutrition and limited access to essential services. UNICEF is also concerned about the impact of recent displacements on host communities, who were already extremely fragile due to years of conflict and instability.

According to the latest estimates, at least 168,000 children had no choice but to flee their homes due to widespread violence in the run-up to and following general elections last December. Around 70,000 of them have not been able to return. Their situation – and that of other children who were already displaced – remains extremely worrying, as many have been separated from their families and are at greater risk of child rights violations such as being abducted, threatened or forced to join armed forces and groups.

Recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups remains the most frequent grave child rights’ violation in CAR; accounting for 584 out of a total of 792 cases of confirmed grave violations documented in 2020. UNICEF has received unverified reports indicating that child recruitment and use has continued over the first four months of 2021. Violence and insecurity have prevented the verification of some reported violations.

“We are extremely concerned about the fate of the thousands of children who, after seeing their lives turned upside down by conflict and violence, may now experience the additional trauma of being forced to join and live among armed actors, to engage in combat, putting both themselves and the lives of others at extreme risk,” said UNICEF Representative in CAR, Mr. Fran Equiza. “These frightening events can leave an indelible mark on children’s and families’ lives and are an unacceptable violation of their fundamental rights.”

Despite significant challenges, including attacks against humanitarian workers, UNICEF continues to strengthen its child protection activities across the country. These efforts include the deployment of mobile child protection teams who can reach vulnerable children, including those located in remote areas. UNICEF and its partners are also working to provide children with mental health and psychosocial activities through child friendly spaces and other community-based interventions.

As part of the longer-term process of reintegration to their families and in their communities, children formerly associated with armed forces and groups are benefitting from specialized programmes that allow them to go back to school or receive vocational training.

Since 2014, UNICEF and its partners have contributed to the release of more than 15,500 children – 30 per cent of whom are girls – from armed forces and groups. Approximately one in five of these children, however, has not yet been enrolled in reintegration programmes, mainly due to funding constraints.

UNICEF’s emergency child protection efforts also remain critically underfunded. In 2020, less than 50 per cent of the interventions were funded directly impacting the wellbeing of thousands of children. In 2021, the organisation is seeking US $8.2 million to scale up its activities in support of children and women affected by violence, exploitation, and abuse. These include the reintegration of 2,000 children released from armed forces and groups to their families and communities, as well as the provision of alternative family-based services for unaccompanied or separated children. As of today, only 26 per cent of these activities are funded.

“UNICEF will continue to be on the frontlines of the response, working to protect children from grave rights violations, but we cannot do this alone,” added Equiza. “To keep children out of harm’s way and help them build the future they deserve, we need the collaboration of all. We renew our call to all parties to the conflict and groups to facilitate the immediate release of all children in their ranks and to protect every civilian, especially children and women from violence, in line with their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law.”

Original article: https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/central-african-republic-nearly-370000-children-now-internally-displaced-amidst

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