The Monam group of rape survivors in the northern town of Bossangoa in the Central African Republic (CAR) does what it can to keep going, but morale is low and money tight.

"We've been left to fend for ourselves. We get little help from outside. Many of our members have died," the group's chairwoman, Pelagie Ndokoyanga, told IRIN/PlusNews.

Monam, which means "common good" in the Sango language, was set up in 2006 to bring together female survivors of sexual violence committed in 2001 and 2002 amid the mayhem leading up to the most recent of CAR's numerous coups d'etat that brought Francois Bozize to power in March 2003.

As well as providing a forum for solidarity, revenue-generation and wellbeing for women who have suffered gender-based violence (GBV), Monam also aims to combat such abuse, identify its perpetrators and fight against the stigmatisation of women in general and rape survivors in particular. According to Ndokoyanga, several members of the group were abandoned by their husbands after they were raped.
When an HIV testing and counselling centre was set up in Bossangoa in 2005, many of the first HIV-positive cases were the result of rape.

Among them is Nkokoyanga, who also works with the Bossangoa Association of People Living with HIV.

"It's normal to tell relatives when one is infected, it's not a sin," she said when several dozen members of the association met IRIN/PlusNews. "But they are the first to spread the news."

"Nobody has a job here. I have all my certificates but I never get a job because people know I am HIV-positive," she added.

Both organisations would like to enhance their incoming-generating activities such as market trading, but lack of the necessary capital makes it hard to get such projects off the ground.

With UNAIDS estimating CAR's HIV prevalence at 10 percent, with just three percent of HIV-positive adults on life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy, there is a clear and urgent need to scale up HIV education, testing and treatment, but continued armed conflict and insecurity have made this difficult in many areas of the country.

Many rapes, little data

Accurate, detailed statistics about the number of women who suffer GBV in CAR are unavailable. This is partly because of the stigma attached to such attacks, but also because the government barely functions outside the capital and international humanitarian actors have only recently begun working in the country in significant numbers.

In late February 2007, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that "sexual and gender-based violence strikes well over 15 percent of women and girls" in northern CAR.

Such attacks increased during the pre-coup unrest and during rebel clashes in early 2006 and early 2007.

One of the main areas of investigation opened in May 2007 by the International Criminal Court (ICC), following a request by the CAR government, is the "many allegations of rape and other aspects of sexual violence perpetrated against hundreds of reported victims...during a peak of violence in 2002/03", according to an ICC statement.

The court’s prosecutor is also closely monitoring reported incidences of GBV committed after 2005, when two rebellions emerged in the north.

“[Following a failed coup attempt in late 2002] there emerged a pattern of massive rapes and sexual violence perpetrated by armed individuals. Sexual violence appears to have been a central feature of the conflict," the ICC statement said, adding that at least 600 victims of GBV had been identified over the course of just five months.

Those targeted included elderly women, young girls and men, the ICC said.

"There were often aggravating aspects of cruelty such as rapes committed by multiple perpetrators, in front of third persons, sometimes with relatives forced to participate," the statement added, noting that the social impact of such crimes "appears devastating".

Programmes slowly getting off the ground

For now, there is little outside help for those directly affected by GBV. Clients of the Organisation pour la compassion et le développement des familles en détresse (OCODEFAD), a domestic NGO, have given testimony about sexual attacks against them to the Bangui office of the ICC prosecutor.

OCODEFAD was founded by Bernadette Sayo, a secondary school teacher whose husband was killed in front of her in 2002 by DRC rebels allied to CAR's then president Ange-Félix Patassé amid a coup attempt. The gunmen subsequently raped her.

OCODEFAD registered hundreds of women and dozens of men, as well as young children and elderly people, sexually abused during this period of unrest. It was largely thanks to pressure from this organisation and international rights groups that the government in Bangui called on the ICC to open its investigation.

In terms of foreign assistance, one NGO, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), set up a GBV programme in the northern town of Kaga-Bandoro in May 2007, providing free medical care and psycho-social counselling for its clients, raising awareness about GBV in nearby communities and holding discussions with various military groups.

Language, as well as stigma, was an obstacle in the beginning. "It took us a month to get a definition of rape. There's no word for it in Sango," Catherine Poulton, IRC GBV coordinator in CAR, told IRIN/PlusNews.
Since it began, the IRC's programme - which covers households along a 50km stretch of road - has handled 1,040 cases of GBV, dealing with associated problems such as sexually transmitted diseases, trauma and rejection by families.

Another seven GBV programmes are in the pipeline for 2008, involving agencies such as the UN World Health Organization, UNICEF, the UN Population Fund and Comité d'Aide Medicale.

In the case of CAR, where the data is so limited, donors may need to break with the tradition of seeking detailed assessments of a problem before signing their cheques. According to some analysts, one has to assume widespread prevalence; in IRC's experience the data emerged from the programme, rather than vice versa.

PlusNews

The Central African Republic, plagued by decades of mutinies, coups and rebellions, is in the midst of another cycle of deadly violence. Although two rebel groups are observing a truce with the government ahead of a national political dialogue, bandits who kill and kidnap have contributed to the displacement of almost 300,000 civilians in the north of the country. Although CAR has long been neglected by the international community, the last year has seen a surge in the presence of UN agencies and NGOs. The UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator, Toby Lanzer, spoke to IRIN about the country’s problems and what is being done about them:

What are some of the main humanitarian problems in CAR?

“In northern CAR people have been turfed from their villages into the bush. They have been marked from all sides… People are terrorised and can’t go back to their villages, even to get water. It’s nice to know there are no camps [for the displaced] because they take away individual dignity. But this poses tremendous challenges because the displaced are scattered over vast areas of land, which makes the situation complicated logistically and expensive.

“Healthcare is another tremendous challenge in a tropical climate where a minor cut left untreated can quickly turn into a pulsating ulcer.

“The biggest problems in terms of humanitarian access are logistics. Either there is no bridge across a river or no road to a village. The northeast is a swamp for six months of the year.”

What is the attitude of donors to the situation in CAR?

“One of the challenges is that it is so terribly poor that it is easy to blame everything on poverty. But most poor people have roofs over their heads, they have access to fields and wells and despite being poor they can live a quiet life. In northern CAR people live anything but a quiet life…

“We’ve had to market education as an emergency to get money because development donors say they don’t have money for CAR… it’s not on any of their lists. Once you get a kid in school you can feed him, clothe him, provide a safe environment and vaccinate him.

“We’ve had to reach out to humanitarian donors and convince them that there is a crisis here, and they have appreciated this. The change has been dramatic. In 2006, UN agencies and NGOs received more money than in the previous three years combined and in 2007 we doubled the 2006 figure. I’m now calling on donors to maintain and increase their engagement in CAR in 2008 because the needs are high, the stakes are high and we can do the work.”

What are the main threats to civilians?

“It ebbs and flows. Now the main threat is banditry. It seems most bandits come in to CAR from Chad and Niger. They kill, kidnap and rape at random and it is very difficult for CAR’s fledgling army, which is in the midst of reform, to control the major arteries throughout the country.

“Another major issue is rebel groups who seem to have moved away from focussing on good relations with the local population and are increasingly engaged in violence against civilians, girls and young women in particular, but also entire villages thought to be partial to the government.

“The third threat is abuse by the army which continues to carry out reprisals and work outside the letter of the law in the north. But the government is making a genuine effort here, the Garde Presidentielle, for example [responsible for some of the worst abuses against civilians in the past] is now under control.

“But the fact that NGOs and UN staff are now driving down main roads, sleeping in villages, and engaging with local authorities and rebel groups means that people think twice before being violent.”

What is the healthcare situation?

“It’s diabolical in two ways: there is the threat of simple ailments killing people and the collapse and destruction of the healthcare infrastructure to prevent and cure illness. This means that many diseases, from gangrene to malaria, become quick killers which disable societies.

“If you can give people clean water, you’ll halve their health problems. But this is a real challenge because of the nature of the displacement and because this is the only country I know in Africa where people are so poor and downtrodden they don’t even have a transistor radio. This is a huge problem because it prevents us doing advocacy about the importance of washing, boiling water and digging deeper wells and we can’t announce food distributions.”

Why has CAR been ignored for so long?

“You can’t ignore something unless you know it exists. In spite of its name, nobody knows where the Central African Republic is. Very few people know it is a county and even fewer have time to worry about it. Also, it is surrounded by bigger, more complex countries... Until we inform people of why CAR matters, it never will.”

Why does it matter?

“It’s loaded with resources; diamonds, gold, uranium, timber and almost definitely oil. It’s in the interest of the international community to keep CAR stable because it’s surrounded by unstable counties, and Darfur and Chad show no signs of improving in the near future. CAR is often used by trouble-makers as a safe-haven, a throughway, a launching pad for actions in Chad and Sudan.

“Development partners have to walk the talk when they say there should be more aid in Africa. When saying ‘we have to help the poorest of the poor’, their absence for CAR is difficult to explain.”

What’s the good news?

The best thing is that violence by state actors has decreased in the north, government troops are conducting fewer operations, and they’ve stopped burning villages. This is the fruit of advocacy, lobbying and reporting.

“There are now 75,000 children in bush schools [in locations to where entire village populations have fled. Tuition is conducted by parents after basic training]. Vaccination campaigns have prevented killer epidemics such as measles; water and sanitation programmes have prevented cholera; the number of NGOs here has increased from three to 30 since mid 2006.”

Source: IRIN

The Monam group of rape survivors in the northern town of Bossangoa in the Central African Republic (CAR) does what it can to keep going, but morale is low and money tight.

"We've been left to fend for ourselves. We get little help from outside. Many of our members have died," the group's chairwoman, Pelagie Ndokoyanga, told IRIN/PlusNews.

Monam, which means "common good" in the Sango language, was set up in 2006 to bring together female survivors of sexual violence committed in 2001 and 2002 amid the mayhem leading up to the most recent of CAR's numerous coups d'etat that brought Francois Bozize to power in March 2003.

As well as providing a forum for solidarity, revenue-generation and wellbeing for women who have suffered gender-based violence (GBV), Monam also aims to combat such abuse, identify its perpetrators and fight against the stigmatisation of women in general and rape survivors in particular. According to Ndokoyanga, several members of the group were abandoned by their husbands after they were raped.

When an HIV testing and counselling centre was set up in Bossangoa in 2005, many of the first HIV-positive cases were the result of rape.

Among them is Nkokoyanga, who also works with the Bossangoa Association of People Living with HIV.

"It's normal to tell relatives when one is infected, it's not a sin," she said when several dozen members of the association met IRIN/PlusNews. "But they are the first to spread the news."

"Nobody has a job here. I have all my certificates but I never get a job because people know I am HIV-positive," she added.

Both organisations would like to enhance their incoming-generating activities such as market trading, but lack of the necessary capital makes it hard to get such projects off the ground.

With UNAIDS estimating CAR's HIV prevalence at 10 percent, with just three percent of HIV-positive adults on life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy, there is a clear and urgent need to scale up HIV education, testing and treatment, but continued armed conflict and insecurity have made this difficult in many areas of the country.

Many rapes, little data

Accurate, detailed statistics about the number of women who suffer GBV in CAR are unavailable. This is partly because of the stigma attached to such attacks, but also because the government barely functions outside the capital and international humanitarian actors have only recently begun working in the country in significant numbers.

In late February 2007, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that "sexual and gender-based violence strikes well over 15 percent of women and girls" in northern CAR.

Such attacks increased during the pre-coup unrest and during rebel clashes in early 2006 and early 2007.

One of the main areas of investigation opened in May 2007 by the International Criminal Court (ICC), following a request by the CAR government, is the "many allegations of rape and other aspects of sexual violence perpetrated against hundreds of reported victims...during a peak of violence in 2002/03", according to an ICC statement.

The court’s prosecutor is also closely monitoring reported incidences of GBV committed after 2005, when two rebellions emerged in the north.

“[Following a failed coup attempt in late 2002] there emerged a pattern of massive rapes and sexual violence perpetrated by armed individuals. Sexual violence appears to have been a central feature of the conflict," the ICC statement said, adding that at least 600 victims of GBV had been identified over the course of just five months.

Those targeted included elderly women, young girls and men, the ICC said.

"There were often aggravating aspects of cruelty such as rapes committed by multiple perpetrators, in front of third persons, sometimes with relatives forced to participate," the statement added, noting that the social impact of such crimes "appears devastating".

Programmes slowly getting off the ground

For now, there is little outside help for those directly affected by GBV. Clients of the Organisation pour la compassion et le développement des familles en détresse (OCODEFAD), a domestic NGO, have given testimony about sexual attacks against them to the Bangui office of the ICC prosecutor.

OCODEFAD was founded by Bernadette Sayo, a secondary school teacher whose husband was killed in front of her in 2002 by DRC rebels allied to CAR's then president Ange-Félix Patassé amid a coup attempt. The gunmen subsequently raped her.

OCODEFAD registered hundreds of women and dozens of men, as well as young children and elderly people, sexually abused during this period of unrest. It was largely thanks to pressure from this organisation and international rights groups that the government in Bangui called on the ICC to open its investigation.

In terms of foreign assistance, one NGO, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), set up a GBV programme in the northern town of Kaga-Bandoro in May 2007, providing free medical care and psycho-social counselling for its clients, raising awareness about GBV in nearby communities and holding discussions with various military groups.

Language, as well as stigma, was an obstacle in the beginning. "It took us a month to get a definition of rape. There's no word for it in Sango," Catherine Poulton, IRC GBV coordinator in CAR, told IRIN/PlusNews.

Since it began, the IRC's programme - which covers households along a 50km stretch of road - has handled 1,040 cases of GBV, dealing with associated problems such as sexually transmitted diseases, trauma and rejection by families.

Another seven GBV programmes are in the pipeline for 2008, involving agencies such as the UN World Health Organization, UNICEF, the UN Population Fund and Comité d'Aide Medicale.

In the case of CAR, where the data is so limited, donors may need to break with the tradition of seeking detailed assessments of a problem before signing their cheques. According to some analysts, one has to assume widespread prevalence; in IRC's experience the data emerged from the programme, rather than vice versa.

Known variously as coupeurs de routes (highwaymen), Zaraguina or simply bandits, criminal gangs who kill, kidnap for ransom, loot and set fire to homes now pose the greatest threat to civilians in the north of the Central African Republic (CAR).

Their attacks have prompted tens of thousands of people to flee their villages to a precarious life in the nearby bush, hindered access to fields and markets, reduced imports along key trade routes, especially from Cameroon, and delayed the return of CAR refugees living in neighbouring Chad.

“The main threat to security in the country lies with these criminals,” Jean-Sebastian Munie, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in CAR told IRIN.

The gangs are well-organised, well-connected and in large part foreign, travelling across the porous borders with Chad and Cameroon and even from as far away as Nigeria and Niger.

Little stands in their way. FACA, as the armed forces are known in CAR, a country roughly the size of France where state infrastructure barely exists outside the capital, comprise just 5,000 troops. But only half of these are thought to be on active duty.

For years, CAR and neighbouring Chad have been ravaged by numerous civil wars, rebellions and mutinies that have led to a proliferation of weapons and to a blurring of the lines between bandits and rebels. Although this article focuses mainly on CAR, highway banditry and kidnapping have long be a trans-national problem in this region, unfettered by weak state borders and fuelled by chronic and endemic under-development and unemployment.

Worsening security

A military coup that brought General François Bozize to power in 2003 deepened a security vacuum in northern CAR. Many of those who helped the former army chief to Bangui, including Chadian mercenaries, have also since turned to banditry, feeling that Bozize failed to deliver on alleged promises of recompense.

This worsening of security in the northwest was one of the purported reasons for the formation of the People’s Army for the Restoration of Democracy/Armée Populaire pour la Restauration de la Démocratie, (APRD) a rebel group made up in part of self-defence units set up to protect villages from the Zaraguinas. Yet the ARPD itself has been widely accused of committing human rights abuses, including kidnapping and looting.

According to the International Crisis Group, among other sources, there are Zaraguina within the APRD.

“There are lots of cases of rebel-by-day, Zaraguina-by-night,” said one humanitarian official in Bangui.

But in recent months Zaraguina attacks in CAR have “been more organised, more vicious, more violent and carried out by larger groups of 10 to 15 people”, according to Annie Raykov, spokeswoman for the UN Refugee Agency.

“They affect almost the entire country now,” said Olivier Bercault, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, after travelling around CAR.

He added: “The APRD chain of command is diluting and some of the rebels may make extra money on the side; there are certainly retreating Chadian rebels making money before going back to Chad and Chadian army defectors doing the same; and an aggressive anti-Zarguina policy in Cameroon that certainly pushed many of the bandits to operate in CAR.”

No law, no justice

According to several reports on CAR and interviews conducted by IRIN, the lack of effective governance has made the country attractive to armed criminals for decades.

The bandits thrive in “an extremely poor environment, where there is no law, no justice and impunity prevails,” said OCHA’s Munie.

At first, they consisted mainly of poachers. While clashes took place with security forces, civilians were usually spared, even paid off for their silence with food, household goods and hunting rifles.

Later, the prized booty evolved from wild animals to merchandise trucked into landlocked CAR from neighbouring states. Well-armed highwaymen would stage dawn ambushes on goods convoys or attack market towns in border areas. The killing of the occasional civilian served to deter resistance.

The government reacted by providing armed escorts for the convoys, leading to frequent violent clashes with Zaraguina gangs. The resulting climate of fear and insecurity in northern CAR caused a major reduction in the flow of commercial goods convoys and led the bandits to revive the practice of cattle theft - which had first become common in the entire region when colonial powers put a stop to endemic local slavery.

The M’bororo ethnic group, for whom cattle are central to status and identity, have been particularly targeted, leading many to abandon their traditional nomadic lifestyle.
If a cattle herder failed to hand over enough animals to satisfy the Zaraguinas, it was common for one of his children, or his wife, to be kidnapped until he produced more.

Frequent attacks

Now, cash ransoms, often the equivalent of several thousands US dollars, are the norm. Faced with the prospect of labouring for years to rebuild their herds, many such destitute cattle-raisers have reportedly taken to banditry themselves.

More recently, the criminals have increasingly targeted sedentary farmers, notably in the prefectures of Ouaham and Ouaham-Pende, historically among the country’s most important producers of cotton, manioc, groundnuts and sorghum. Such attacks grow more frequent in the dry season, which runs from October to May, and often involve the looting of a village’s entire food stores as well as all farming tools.

Responding to such critical needs poses a dilemma for humanitarian actors. “Food distribution can pose additional risks as it might attract rebels or highwaymen to distribution zones to extort the food [aid] from the beneficiaries,” said a joint World Food Programme/UNICEF report published in October 2007.

The Zaraguinas “do as they like because they know that our forces aren’t strong enough to provide security across the country,” conceded General Antoine Gambi, who heads a committee laying the groundwork for an extensive overhaul of CAR’s security sector.

“They enjoy the complicity of local officials in some areas who are in their pay. They include deserters from the armies of neighbouring countries,” he added.

Thomas Orungai, the head of CAR Red Cross in the northern town of Bossangoa, told IRIN: “Bandits are really damaging the economy in many areas. They loot food so people don’t have anything to eat and cannot always go in to the bush to their farms.”

Orungai added that Bossangoa’s population had swelled by more than 1,000 since January 2008 as a result of people fleeing outlying villages.

Villagers fled

Zaraguinas twice raided Boudigui-Boyange, about 25km west of Bossangoa, in Ouaham prefecture. On the first occasion, in July 2007, they looted everything they could carry. All the villagers fled into the nearby bush.

When another group of bandits turned up in October, they killed two villagers and systematically burnt all the houses and their contents, promising to return and do the same should the village be rebuilt.

Despite this threat, most of the residents have now returned from the bush to reconstruct their homes. “We know the authorities can’t do anything to protect us,” said one, Noel. “The government sent three soldiers to a town up the road, but they left after a few days.”

On the advice of local officials, 22 young men in Boudigui-Boyange have formed a self-defence unit. But their arsenal of 16 crude, slow-to-reload hunting rifles, a single box of ammunition and a variety of traditional weapons are no match for the AK-47s commonly carried by the Zaraguinas.

“They are everywhere, near our fields, our hunting grounds so we are scared to go there,” explained one villager.

Seeking sanctuary

Along a road about 200km northeast of Bossangoa, close to the Chadian border, the threat of banditry is so great that even the bush is considered too dangerous.

Well over 1,000 people who fled villages in this area now live in a site for displaced people (IDPs) - the only one in the country – set up with assistance from French NGO Solidarités in the town of Kabo. The site consists of a few hundred flimsy dwellings built by the residents themselves. Some are covered in plastic sheeting, others roofed in straw. None seem up to withstanding the heavy rains due in just a few weeks.

“I can’t go back to my village,” Hubert, a 42-year-old father of eight told IRIN. “The Zaraguinas killed 13 people when around 30 of them, mostly Chadians, attacked us in November….They are still targeting the road where we live. If there is no security, how can we return?”

When the site was established in late 2007, it was designed as a temporary transit facility for those displaced by intermittent violence linked to rebel activity. Now, with no end to banditry in sight, and not long to go before the rains, it seems likely that a more permanent camp is needed for those cut off from their homes.

This is a sensitive area of humanitarian policy. By upgrading the Kabo site into a camp there is a risk of unduly prolonging farmers’ absence from their fields and also of creating tension with the town’s permanent residents who may end up feeling worse off than the IDPs.

What next?

“Banditry is very difficult to deal with,” Toby Lanzer, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in CAR, told IRIN. “What you need to do is empower the police, the gendarmerie and army as well as the justice system so that the country can be controlled within the letter of the law.”

Such empowerment – and ending impunity - is precisely the aim of the reform of the entire security sector. But this process has barely got off the ground and will take years to complete, and its success will depend in part on reaching comprehensive peace accords with two rebel groups and on progress made in a process of national political dialogue.

In the meantime, FACA, perhaps stung by accusations of doing nothing to tackle the banditry, and by the relatively low level of banditry in some areas held by rebels, has swung into action. Troops raided numerous Zaraguina bases in early 2008. But for the most part such raids simply scattered the criminals. On the one occasion where soldiers took prisoners, according to a well-placed source, 10 were executed.

General Gambi, the head of the security reform preparatory committee, told IRIN that FACA could do a better job if it had helicopters to drop troops into zones where the Zaraguina were active. “But we don’t have the means for this. We need the helicopters.”

As many as 1 million people in the conflict-affected areas of the Central African Republic (CAR) do not have access to clean water and are at risk of a host of waterborne diseases that kill thousands of people every year.

The situation is particularly dire in the north-eastern parts of the country, such as Haute Kotto, where a mere 1 per cent of people can access potable water. Further, across the conflict-torn north, tens of thousands of people have fled their villages and now live in the bush. Too afraid to return to their villages to get clean water, they are forced to resort to collecting water wherever they can find it, often from stagnant ponds or rivers in the bush.

For those who have remained in their villages, the situation is often not much better – over one quarter of wells in northern CAR are currently not working, leaving thousands of villagers as exposed to waterborne diseases as the displaced population are.

To remedy this situation, water experts from 14 aid organisations have formed a partnership to ensure a comprehensive response in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WATSAN) sector, coordinating for example the repair and drilling of wells and boreholes and the provision of water pumps. The “water alliance” is lead by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
John Holmes, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, expressed his appreciation for the implementation of this progressive approach in CAR, in line with the so-called “cluster” approach of identifying sector needs.

“Having a clear leader of the water, sanitation and hygiene team, responsible for coordinating the other organisations involved and providing relief when nobody else is able to, allows us to save many more lives,” said Mr. Holmes.

For 2008, United Nations agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have designed ten projects to improve access to clean water and adequate sanitary facilities across northern CAR. Of the ten, only three have received funding to date. These water projects need to be carried out during the dry season, which usually ends in April, and delayed funding could put this key aspect of the aid operation in CAR at risk.

“People are dying for want of clean water. If our water projects get the support we have asked for on time, the coordination mechanisms that we have put in place will allow us to provide safe water to over 250,000 people in 2008,” said Toby Lanzer, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the Central African Republic.

The WATSAN sector was identified as one of four key areas for life-saving assistance in CAR in the 2008 appeal presented to donors by the United Nations and NGOs. The appeal asks the international community to contribute $96.2 million to humanitarian action in the country, of which more than $5.6 million are needed for water and sanitation. To date, only 13 per cent of funds sought for WATSAN projects have been received.

Several thousands of women and young girls have endured rape and other sexual violence in the conflict-torn north of the Central African Republic (CAR).

Research suggests that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) strikes well over 15 percent of women and girls in the region.

Rape cases are being reported in northern CAR on a weekly basis. The most recent reports mention two twelve-year old girls, who were raped while searching for firewood in the bush near their shelter. A local newspaper also described the ordeal of a thirteen-year old girl assaulted earlier this month on her way to sell palm oil at a market. Health workers in the western province of Nana-Mambéré have expressed shock at the increasing number of rapes of women and girls.

“Sexual violence is a disturbingly common feature of the insecurity in the north of the Central African Republic,” said John Holmes, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. “We must ensure that those responsible are brought to justice,” he added.

Aid groups in the country are providing rape victims with medical and psychological care, including HIV testing and counselling. Among 20,000 displaced persons in the north of the country, more than 1,000 rape survivors have been assisted in the last six months. Networks of victims of sexual abuse are being supported by providing small amounts of money for productive activities.

“There is a dire need to expand the programmes that support the survivors of sexual violence and help communities to prevent it in the future,” affirmed Toby Lanzer, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the country. “The joint [non-governmental organisation] NGO - United Nations aid programme for 2008 includes seven projects extending services to survivors of sexual violence in crisis zones,” he added.

The 2008 action plan for CAR, as outlined in the Common Appeal Process (CAP), asks the international community to contribute $92.6 million in assistance funds. So far this year, some $7.4 million, or close to 8 percent of the amount required, has been received.

“Can you help me find my husband?” asked an elderly resident of this dusty, traumatised town in the northwest of the Central African Republic (CAR).

The old woman explained she had last seen him three months previously when he and his brother were kidnapped by bandits known as Zaraguina just outside Paoua.

Asked to pay a ransom to secure her husband’s release, the woman managed to raise three million CFA francs (about US$6,600) - a fantastic sum in a country where two-thirds of the population survive on less than a dollar a day - by selling the family’s livestock.

But those she paid either betrayed her or had no connection with the kidnappers; now destitute, she is still waiting to be reunited with her husband.

Just one, and now the most serious, of the deadly threats facing civilians in CAR, Zaraguinas have abducted scores of civilians, mostly children, for ransom, according to an Amnesty International report, Central African Republic – Civilians in Peril in the Wild North.

“There has been virtually no action taken by the government to directly prevent the abductions, arrest the perpetrators or otherwise protect the population,” according to the report.

CAR is roughly the size of France but boasts fewer than 5,000 soldiers on active duty.

That Paoua is an island under the control of these government forces surrounded by rebel-held territory is little comfort to its residents, most of whom have been forced to flee on several occasions when the two sides clashed. As if to erase the memory of such traumatic episodes, the worst of which took place in early 2006 and 2007, people refer to them only as “les événements”: the events.

“Up until very recently government forces were burning entire villages to the ground and summarily executing large numbers of people,” the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston, stated in a preliminary report on CAR released in early February 2007.

While Alston took pains to stress that “President François Bozize [who came to power in a March 2003 coup and legitimised his rule through the ballot box two years later] has taken significant steps to end abuses by his troops”, and that such abuses had fallen dramatically, he noted that it was “too early to conclude that the government has definitely turned a new page”.

Safety in the bush

The road leading north out of Paoua towards Chad is dotted with largely deserted villages. Many, like René (not his real name), a farmer, have set up temporary homes in the nearby bush, a safe distance away from the main road.

“It began with the events of 15 March 2003,” René told IRIN in a makeshift compound of straw huts about a kilometre from his empty roadside village, where his home had been torched. That was the date Bozize seized power, ousting Ange-Félix Patassé, who was born in Paoua.

“Soldiers would drive by, shooting into the village. When we saw vehicles we had to flee. Some of those who stayed were killed,” said René.

Spikes of rebel activity in the Paoua area in 2006 and 2007 led government troops to target civilians, including children again, accusing them of backing the insurgent Armée Populaire pour la Restauration de la Démocratie (APRD; People’s Army for the Restoration of Democracy).

Asked if he had any sympathy for the rebels, or knew why they had taken up arms, René shook his head. “We have nothing to do with politics. Our politics is the soil.”

Chad is another source of danger, with bandits and soldiers purportedly pursuing Chadian rebels. “Three years ago vehicles with Chadian number plates came and 27 oxen were stolen. An ox is like a tractor in the fields, without them we can’t farm so much land,” said René.

Even those who are able to cultivate often find it too dangerous to take their produce to market. Stored food also increases the chances of violent looting raids.

Armed poachers present additional threats to civilians in the northeast and southeast corners of the country.

Fragile peace

Thanks to a de facto ceasefire between the army and the rebels, a precarious peace prevails in Paoua. Yet a sense of true, durable security is missing.

“We have great problems with security,” one resident told IRIN. “We need a protection force. In town things are okay, but going outside is difficult,” he added.

Paoua became something of a ghost town after the “events” of 2006 and 2007, with much of the population fleeing into the bush or northwards into refugee camps in Chad. Many have yet to return.

“It all happened very suddenly. The rebels came into town early one morning two years ago,” recalled Alexi, a 27-year-old recent returnee from Chad. “The army thought the young people here were helping the rebels so I had to flee into the bush with my two children and my wife. I have not seen her since,” he said. “Now we are just praying for peace.”

Peace is a prerequisite for reversing the dire humanitarian indicators in CAR, where decades of brutal dictatorship, mutinies, coups and attempted coups, compounded by a dearth of development aid, have created what the International Crisis Group described in December 2007 as “worse than a failed state, it has almost become a phantom state having lost all significant institutional capacity”.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, almost a quarter of the country’s 4.3m inhabitants are affected by violence; 295,000 are forcibly displaced, a third living as refugees in Chad, Cameroon or Sudan. Life expectancy is 40 for men, 45 for women; more than one in 10 children die before the age of one; and just under a third of the population has no access safe drinking water. Of the 177 countries in the UN’s Human Development Index, CAR ranks 172nd.

After hiding in the bush for more than a year, families in the northern Central African Republic (CAR) regions of Ouaham and Nana Grebizi are starting to return to their roadside villages.

Clashes between government forces and the Armée Populaire pour la Restauration de la Démocratie (APRD, People’s Army for the Restoration of Democracy) rebel movement towards the end of 2006 led to the exodus of tens of thousands of people from dozens of villages along the road linking the towns of Kabo and Kaga Bandoro, about 100km to the southeast.

Such sudden large-scale population movements took place across huge swathes of the north, with almost 200,000 civilians fleeing their homes.

It was not the actual battles between soldiers and insurgents that prompted the flight as actions by government troops to deny the rebels shelter and sanctuary.
Many people said the army considered anyone left in the villages to be rebels.

"Tens of thousands of homes have been burned to the ground …in different parts of northern CAR, with some villages being completely destroyed during reprisals by armed forces," according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

"[A]rbitrary arrests, torture, summary execution, forced recruitment, gender-based violence and looting of private property" were also common, UNHCR stated in a briefing document.

Keen to stay close to their fields of manioc and groundnuts, which provide the only livelihood for most, the displaced tended to set up temporary homes close to their villages. In the absence of many international humanitarian actors they survived as best they could.

"When we conducted an assessment mission here in December 2006, all of the villages on this road were totally empty," Joseph Benamse of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IRIN.

"Even if people came back to their villages to collect drinking water, they would run away as soon as they heard a vehicle approaching," he added.

New beginnings

A few of the villages are still abandoned but life has begun to return to most. All along the road, villagers could be seen rebuilding their homes and laying new straw roofs, often not far from APRD checkpoints manned by youths armed with crude hunting rifles.
"At first, about a year ago, some people started coming back during the day," Maurice Daba, a resident of Waki II, a village 34km southeast of Kabo, told IRIN.

"In October [2007] we began to move back permanently after aid workers told us it was calm and most people have now returned," added Daba.

Food is the most pressing concern. “We did manage to plant last year but bandits [now the biggest security threat across northern CAR] made it difficult to reach our crops so we were not able to harvest much,” said Daba.

"Now we don’t have seeds to sow this season. We will get some if we get money, but money is tight. I don’t see how we can get seeds before the rains start in a few weeks," he added.

Daba and other Waki villagers survive on wild roots, some of which need to be soaked for a day before eating, he explained, adding that the last time he had seen a food distribution was in September 2007.

Residents of Bakaba, 18km northwest of Kaga-Bandoro, told a similar tale of lacking seeds and tools for the coming planting season and of having to survive on food they could forage from the bush.

However, the soil in much of CAR is very fertile, and bush meat provides an essential source of protein for many. Mangos, papayas, grapefruits and oranges, which ripen at different times of the year, have also helped to temper levels of acute malnutrition.

And the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) is distributing in the area, either directly through schools or NGO partners such as CARITAS, to some 30,000 displaced people in the Kago-Bandoro area.
Help at hand

A recent surge in humanitarian actors, from just five NGOs in 2006 to more than 20 in March 2008, has helped to mitigate the hardship.

A couple of thousand people living along the Kabo-Kaga-Bandoro axis are benefiting from a cash-for-work road rehabilitation scheme run by ACTED and Solidarité (which also distributes essential seeds and tools along this road), with funding from the European Commission’s Humanitarian Office.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with UNHCR, have been sensitising both rebels and state forces to human rights, explaining the provisions of international instruments, such as the Geneva Conventions and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

Bisimwa Ruhana-Mirinde, IRC’s medical coordinator in Kaga-Bandoro, believes these efforts have paid off. "Travellers along the road are no longer forced to make payments at barriers. Fewer people are now being beaten up in their villages. Food distributed by aid agencies is not looted any more," he told IRIN.

IRC also took over the regional hospital in Kaga-Bandoro in late 2006, at a time of frequent clashes between rebels and government forces, who controlled territory to the north and south of the town respectively.

"It was a kind of phantom hospital, with no medicines, just one doctor and only five or six consultations a day. Now we see about 150 patients a day and have a working operating theatre," Boris Varnitzky, IRC country director in CAR, told IRIN.

The primary healthcare system in the area is also being revamped with help from Merlin, a British NGO. Thanks to this programme, 11 dilapidated and looted health facilities are being rehabilitated and, like Kabo hospital, care and medicines are free.

However, CAR’s near-bankrupt economy means there is a long way to go before healthcare provision returns to "normal", as Arsen Mossio, the head of one health centre near Kaga-Bandoro, explained. "I’m owed 27 months of salary," he said.

IRIN