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	UN experts urge parties to ‘pull back from the brink’ of all-out war in Central African Republic by UN Office for Human Rights & agencies   9 July 2014   UN in Central African Republic condemns attack on civilians sheltering in church.   In what it termed a “brutal” attack, the United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Central African Republic (CAR) today condemned the killing of dozens of displaced people at the site of Saint Joseph Cathedral and the Bishop"s residence in Bambari.   As many as 6,000 people are believed to have been taking shelter at the church, according to media reports. On 7 July, rebels purportedly entered the site and killed at least 27 people, including women and children.   The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) “condemns in the strongest possible terms all acts of violence,” a UN spokesperson said in New York.   The UN Mission remains engaged in efforts to end the violence and strongly encourages all parties to lay down they arms and engage in political and reconciliation processes aimed at putting a sustainable end to the cycle of violence in the country, he added.   Violence in Bambari has escalated at an alarming rate, according to UN officials, and there is increased targeting of civilians in the area, which is reportedly home to one of the country"s Roman Catholic diocese.   Fighting in the country overall has been increasing, fuelled by what are believed to inter-communal retaliatory attacks between anti-balaka and Séléka rebels, after the latter were ousted from power in January 2014. An estimated 2.2 million people are believed to be in need of humanitarian aid as a result.   In late May, the UN Security Council strongly condemned the latest wave of violence in the country. It stressed that the CAR Transitional Authorities have the primary responsibility to protect civilians, and to encourage them to take the necessary measures to prevent further violence in the capital, Bangui, and throughout the country.   More than 2.3 million children are suffering the consequences of the crisis rocking the country, says UNICEF. Children have been directly targeted. On average, at least one child has been maimed or killed in clashes every day in the past six months.   Malnutrition rates are high and the number of children associated with armed groups could be as high as 10,000, according to the Ministry of Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration. One in three children who were enrolled in the last school year did not go back to school this year.   The support of the international community is needed to help provide security so that schools can be rebuilt and children can safely return to them.   Warning about the deteriorating situation in the Central African Republic (CAR), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said that the violence there was threatening humanitarian assistance and creating major difficulties for relief workers in the field.   Speaking to reporters in Geneva, WFP spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs said the difficulties spawned by deteriorating security are only compounded by drought and lack of precipitation in parts of the country, notably in the northwest, causing yet another decline in agricultural production.   As of 27 June, there were 215,063 CAR refugees in Cameroon, 107,872 of whom have arrived since December 2013. The current rate of arrivals is 1,000 per week.   Refugees are arriving in dire conditions: many are suffering from exhaustion, dehydration, and malnutrition. Acute malnutrition among children and mothers is above the emergency threshold, with GAM rates reaching 35–40%; under-five mortality rates are above emergency levels, in Gipti and Gado Bezere sites. A cholera epidemic has been confirmed close to the CAR border. A Level 3 Emergency was declared in late May.   Humanitarian operations continue to be severely constrained by insecurity and serious funding gaps. The humanitarian situation is dire, with host communities and refugees competing over already depleted natural resources. The ongoing lean season is aggravating malnutrition rates in a region already suffering from the cumulative effects of food insecurity, poverty, and critical levels of global chronic and acute malnutrition.   31 January 2014   Central African Republic: UN calls on donors to close massive funding gap.   Unless additional funding is secured for the Central African Republic (CAR), nearly two million desperate people will be forced to go without food and basic necessities, the United Nations said today, as regional leaders attending an African Union summit in Ethiopia discuss ways to stop the ongoing fighting.   UN and humanitarian organizations urgently have requested $551 million to provide vital relief and protection to 1.9 million people across the country over the next three months, but the appeal is only 11 per cent funded, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).   Briefing journalists in Geneva, OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke estimated that about half of the country’s population is in urgent need of basic aid, “Funding is a big issue, and because of the developments on the ground, the initial appeal had been doubled.”   “UN considers CAR as a crisis of the highest priority, along with Syria and the Philippines in the aftermath of the typhoon,” he added.   The lack of proper transport infrastructure is a major obstacle for the more than 4,000 aid staff operating in the country on behalf of at least 76 humanitarian organizations.   The crisis in the CAR – which began when the mostly Muslim Séléka rebels launched attacks a year ago, and has recently taken on increasingly sectarian overtones as militias known as anti-Balaka (anti-machete), who are mainly Christians, take up arms – is the focus of today’s discussion at an African Union (AU) summit.   Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, who is representing the UN at the 22nd session of the Assembly of the AU in Addis Ababa said the common AU-UN goal must be to end the “atrocious confrontation” between Christians and Muslims and restore the harmony that had for so long marked relations between the two communities.   In a meeting yesterday, he called on all UN Member States to offer generous donations for the “seriously underfunded” AU peacekeeping mission known as MISCA that is trying to restore stability in the country.   MISCA troops often provide escort for aid distribution, UN World Food Programme (WFP) spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva.   WFP had received only 14 per cent of the $107 million appeal for the emergency operation in CAR from January to August 2014, including the rainy season which starts in April.   “WFP urgently needs $95 million to immediately distribute life-saving food assistance and to pre-position food stocks before the rains start in April and roads become impassable,” she noted. Despite the ongoing fighting, the UN agency has provided food aid to 220,000 displaced people in the capital of Bangui and the towns of Bouar and Bossangoa, since the start of the year, according to WFP.   8 January 2014   A United Nations human rights expert today called for urgent protection and increased assistance to the growing number of persons displaced by violence in the Central African Republic.   “The number of displaced persons has increased dramatically over the past few weeks, and immediate access by humanitarian agencies, including to those sheltering in the airport in Bangui, must be granted without delay,” said UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani.   The UN expert specifically noted the need to strengthen the international community’s response to protect and assist those fleeing the violence, especially women, children, and people with disabilities.   Nearly one million people have been internally displaced in the country, according to the latest figures from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), nearly half of them from the capital of Bangui.   Thousands of people are estimated to have been killed, nearly 1 million driven from their homes, and 2.2 million, about half the population, need humanitarian aid in the conflict that erupted when mainly Muslim Séléka rebels launched attacks a year ago and forced President François Bozizé to flee in March.   Armed attacks between ex-Séléka and Christian anti-balaka militias have escalated significantly in the past two weeks.   Mr. Beyani also noted that while crises are flaring up in other parts of the world, they should not affect the scale of the response urgently needed in the CAR.   “Humanitarian agencies urgently need extra resources to provide for the basic needs of those displaced from their homes,” he stressed.   19 December 2013   A group of independent United Nations human rights experts today urged all parties in the Central African Republic (CAR), where armed clashes have escalated in recent weeks leading to deaths and population displacement, to step back from the brink of all-out sectarian conflict.   “The current shocking violence in the Central African Republic threatens to descend into a full-scale sectarian conflict between Christian and Muslim communities, but it can and must be halted now,” the experts said, while expressing grave concern over the escalating violence in the country and the rapidly deteriorating human rights and humanitarian situation.   After the Séléka rebel coalition forced President François Bozizé to flee in March, a transitional government was entrusted with restoring peace and paving the way for democratic elections, but armed clashes have erupted again, sometimes on religious grounds with Christians and Muslims launching reprisal attacks against each other in numerous places in the capital, Bangui. Violence was also reported in the town of Bossangoa, some 400 kilometres north-west of Bangui.   The recent escalation of fighting has forcibly displaced some 210,000 people in the last two weeks in Bangui, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). More than 710, 000 people have been uprooted within CAR since the current crisis began a year ago, while over 75,000 others have fled into exile, the agency added.   The experts noted in a news release that atrocities have been reported by all parties, with UN and media reports suggesting a rapidly rising toll of civilian victims, including women and children.   Retaliatory attacks and arbitrary executions by armed elements from both sides, the recruitment of child soldiers, attacks on medical facilities, and increasing incidents of rape, have all been documented.   “However, an opportunity remains to pull back from the brink of all-out war with the terrible consequences that this entails and to establish an immediate truce to enable dialogue and peace talks to begin,” the experts said. “We urge leaders on all sides to grasp every opportunity to avoid further bloodshed.”   While they welcomed attempts by some religious leaders to establish inter-faith dialogue and to defuse tensions, the experts emphasized the primary responsibility of the State to protect the human rights of all. They also called on the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region to take urgent measures to resolve the crisis.   The experts urged leaders from all sides to “take control of their forces and militias and to cease atrocities immediately,” but warned that, in the current dangerous environment, some initiatives to disarm militia groups were leaving some communities vulnerable to attack by opposing forces.   “We call for international actors to closely monitor the situation in order not to leave communities undefended,” they said.   In addition, full, secure and unfettered access must be provided to humanitarian agencies in view of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced in the country and the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, they added.   CAR Situation Analysis - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs   This analysis in is based on the recent humanitarian needs overview (HNO) developed by the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), latest Flash Updates and secondary data consolidated by OCHA.   A serious protection crisis has been unfolding in CAR over the last twelve months affecting the entire country and leading to the recent deployment of French peacekeeping forces. Reports covering Bangui, only, estimates that over 213,760 people have been displaced during recent clashes and more than 1,000 people killed. At least 12% of CAR’s population, around 639,000 people, is now displaced.   The HCT estimates that around 2.0 million people, almost half of the population, are in need of some form of humanitarian assistance. The collapse of the state, law and order, and public services risks further exacerbating the situation. The intervention of French peacekeeping forces promises some degree of stability and protection to the civilians but its strength will be insufficient to cover the whole country.   The affected population is in dire need of food, health care, water sanitation and shelter (HNO Dec 2013). Needs are expected to increase under current conditions, both in terms of people affected and severity. Some 1.1 million people require emergency food assistance, according to WFP. Human rights violations, sexual and gender-based violence and destruction of livelihoods by armed and non-armed groups are widespread. More than 650,000 children are unable to go to school due to the closure or occupation of about 60% of schools, and 2,500 have been recruited by rebel forces, according to MSF.   A large number of the displaced, particularly in hard-to-reach areas, have gone without access to safe water, shelter, health and nutritional support for almost a year. 50% percent of the IDPs are moderately or severely food insecure (EFSA September 2013).   National and local capacity has been reduced or crippled by the breakdown of ministries and social infrastructures. Government and nongovernmental health service providers cover only 10 to 20% of the population. Communities are practically left to themselves, forcing many households to revert to negative coping strategies. International capacity is increasing although access remains limited due to insecurity and extremely weak infrastructure.   17 December 2013   Famine and malnutrition stalk strife-torn Central African Republic.   United Nations agencies have warned of possible famine and severe malnutrition in the Central African Republic (CAR), calling on donors to provide urgent funding to mitigate the crisis in the impoverished country where a year of conflict has already killed thousands of people and driven 750,000 others from their homes.   “We urgently need support from donors so we won’t start running out of food in January,” the UN World Food Programme (WFP) Regional Director for West Africa, Denise Brown, said in Bangui, the capital of CAR. “We are providing food for hungry people wherever we can in CAR. But insecurity is the biggest challenge.”   With the coming harvest threatened since farmers have fled their lands or lack seeds due to looting and because people have had to eat them instead of saving them for planting, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and WFP have launched a 100-day response plan to boost nutrition and restore agricultural production through seed distribution and storage facilities.   But so far FAO has only been able to raise $4.3 million of the $61 million needed to help 1.8 million people, out of a total population of 4.6 million.   “The success of the next planting season crucially hinges on the return of farming families to the fields,” FAO said in a news release. “Families who are unable to plant in March will have to wait one whole year before they can hope to harvest again. Failure to help these families will have dramatic consequences on the food security for a quarter of the Central African population.   “The low production perceived from the last harvest coupled with a prevailing situation of chronic country-wide malnutrition is setting the stage for a full-scale food and nutrition security crisis should the next planting season fail.”   Central African Republic faces looming food crisis. (FAO)   The Central African Republic (CAR), wracked by conflict that has killed thousands of people and driven more than half a million from their homes over the past year, is now facing a looming food crisis, the United Nations warned today, calling for urgent action to provide crop seeds to farmers.   Crop production has decreased sharply after the civil conflict that broke out in the north-east last December spread through the rest of the country and seeds are now in short supply due to looting and because people have had to eat them instead of saving them for planting.   “Desperate farmers have been selling tools and livestock so that they can feed their families, which leaves them without means of making an income, and raids on livestock and agricultural equipment have been widespread,” UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Emergency and Rehabilitation Director Dominique Burgeon said in Rome.   Due to the challenges in reaching affected farming families, work must begin now to help them get ready for the 2014 planting seasons, FAO said. Planting of the main 2014 maize crop is due to start in early March in the centre and south of the country, while planting of sorghum and millet should start in the north of the country in May. Farmers urgently need seeds and other agricultural inputs in time for planting in March.   Agriculture accounts for 53 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and a major share of employment in the CAR, where nearly three quarters of the population of 4.6 million people live in rural areas. Agricultural exports, one of the main sources of foreign exchange earnings, have dropped sharply this year, especially timber, cotton and coffee. Food prices are high and volatile due to severe market disruption. Maize prices in Bangui, the capital, rose 31 per cent between January and November, while millet prices increased by 70 per cent between March and October in Ouham province, an important sorghum and millet producing area in the northwest.   Bukar Tijani, FAO Regional Representative for Africa said: “We need to get inputs to them urgently. Failure to assist them will bring a serious deterioration of the food security situation and a massive need for protracted food assistance.”   22 November 2013   The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is urging greater international attention to address the “forgotten crisis” in the Central African Republic (CAR) where the entire population of 4.6 million people has been affected by the ongoing crisis.   “The CAR is a forgotten crisis at the global level,” Souleymane Diabate, UNICEF Representative in the country. “While the world is preoccupied with what is happening in Syria or the Philippines, the situation is very tragic.”   Despite a “very fragile, volatile and unpredictable context”, the UN agency is holding immunization and back-to-school campaigns to increase the maternal and infant mortality rates in the country which ranks among the lowest in social indicators.   UNICEF is also working with armed groups to release children conscripted into the army, Mr. Diabate and spokesperson Patrick McCormick said. As many as 6,000 children are estimated to be associated with the armed groups.   Plagued by decades of instability and fighting, the CAR witnessed a resumption of violence last December when the Séléka rebel coalition launched a series of attacks. A peace agreement was reached in January, but the rebels again seized the capital, Bangui, in March, forcing President François Bozizé to flee.   The landlocked nation of 4.6 million people has slipped into chaos since March. U.N. officials and rights groups say both sides may have committed war crimes.   "This has long been a forgotten crisis, and now the situation with the breakdown in law and order, the takeover ... by the armed groups means the situation in the country is chaotic," said John Ging, director of operations for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.   "Over half of the population of this country are in need of humanitarian assistance," he said. "But the number one issue today is protection, and the atrocities that are being committed against the civilian population are indescribable."   Ging, who recently spent three days in Central African Republic, said armed groups are inciting Christian and Muslim communities against each other and instilling widespread fear. He said crimes have included mutilation, rape and torture.   "We are very, very concerned about what is happening now in terms of the attacks on communities and what that will then mean in terms of inter-communal tensions and the prospects for more violence," he said.   The country is facing a dire humanitarian situation affecting the entire population. There are continued reports of gross human rights violations, including the deliberate killing of civilians, acts of sexual violence against women and children, and the destruction and looting of property, including hospitals, schools and churches.   http://reliefweb.int/report/central-african-republic/msf-condemns-continued-attacks-against-civilians-muslim-communities http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=46985&Cr=central+african+republic&Cr1= http://reliefweb.int/country/caf Visit the related web page
	Protection of Civilians: Bridging Policy and Practice by Vesselin Popovski United Nations University   The need to spare civilians in armed conflict has been acknowledged for millennia, and the origins of this norm can be found in early religious texts. However, only in the second-half of the 20th century was the protection of civilians (POC) firmly universalized and codified following the landmark 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.   The POC has since developed in law, but not much in practice, and the massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia in the presence of UN peacekeeping troops signaled the need for change. The need for POC is now widely acknowledged. The scope of situations to which it applies and the operational capacity and preparedness to accomplish it have expanded, and many UN peacekeeping operations have been given POC mandates.   But how do UN peacekeepers protect civilians? A recent report from the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) provides an answer by evaluating eight out of the ten current UN peacekeeping operations with POC mandates. (It excludes MINUSCA (the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic) and MINUSMA (the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali) — two missions too young to be evaluated.)   It is an important report because POC has become a very visible indicator of how well the entire UN organization is working, or failing to work. For the report, the United Nations University provided OIOS with academic background on how to approach and review the ways POC mandates are reported by peacekeeping operations, and offered methodological advice on how to draft the questionnaire and analyze the results.   The setbacks and challenges of protecting civilians through peacekeeping operations were addressed with a comprehensive report commissioned by the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in 2009. The report examines a “chain” of actions from Security Council mandates to UN mission planning, and deployment to the activities of peacekeeping operations in the field. It found dramatic gaps that undermine the ability of peacekeeping missions to protect civilians, reporting that the chain of events to support POC was broken.   In the five years since, much has improved. Policy guides have been issued, structures have been clarified, and cluster partnerships between protection actors have been created. Some activities appear to be achieving results, preventing and mitigating attacks on civilians in locations within the reach of the peacekeepers.   However, despite these improvements, lack of capacity and willingness to actively intervene exposed many civilians to deadly risks. The civilian toll in many conflicts continues to be high, even when peacekeeping forces are in proximity. In a report last year, OIOS listed the following reasons for this:   Troop-contributing countries and Security Council members have different views on the use of force. A double line of command exists — troop-contributing countries and mission leadership issue differing instructions to contingents of peacekeepers.   There is a lack of clarity on a mission’s obligation to act when a host government is unable or unwilling to exercise its responsibility to protect civilians.   Peacekeepers have insufficient resources to respond to force with force; and contingent members themselves are concerned about possible penalties if their use of force is judged inappropriate.   The gap between POC as policy and POC as practice has widened, and it may compromise UN peacekeeping. To narrow the gap, the OIOS in the new report recommended:   Enhancement of operational control of the UN over military contingents — failures to follow POC instructions issued by a peacekeeping mission should be communicated to UN Headquarters for review with the troop-contributing country concerned.   Clarification of peacekeeping tasks at a tactical level to facilitate and speed up decision-making on the ground. Improvement of working relationships and coordination with humanitarian entities.   DPKO and the Department of Field Support (DFS) (which provides dedicated support to peacekeeping field missions and political field missions) accepted these recommendations, only expressing a reservation with the first one, stating that challenges to command and control are rare, and pointing to existing processes that address failures to follow instructions.   This recent OIOS report is innovative in identifying factors that have a direct bearing on POC effectiveness. For example, the role of the troop-contributing countries has never really been put in clear black-and-white terms in any UN document so far. If some of the solutions to the problems lie with the UN Secretariat and other UN entities, others lie with the Member States.   The protection of civilians won’t happen if troop-contributing countries do not instruct their contingents to use all necessary means when civilians face deadly risks. Such instructions remain within the command of the Member States, not the Secretary-General or anyone else.   Exactly because the use of force is a highly contentious issue, an urgent and comprehensive debate on it — within the broader debate on POC — is essential to build consensus. Visit the related web page
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