Spotlight On Peace In Central African Republic

UN Puts Spotlight On Consolidating Peace In Central African Republic

New York, Sep 20 2010 4:10PM

The United Nations today called on the international community to increase aid to the Central African Republic (CAR) to prevent a resumption of conflict in an impoverished country that is a prime target of UN efforts to consolidate peace in once violence-torn nations.

The CAR has been “a kind of forgotten country,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for CAR Sahle-Work Zewde told reporters ahead of a high-level event at UN Headquarters in New York on the margins of a development summit.

“So this kind of event will definitely bring the CAR on the radar screen. It’s a post-conflict country with daunting challenges,” she said, citing delayed elections, now scheduled for next year, and the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) progress that seeks to consolidate peace in a country that has been torn by civil war, ethnic fighting and political crises. “At this juncture it’s very important to have a renewed international interest.”

For the past two years CAR, which has seen significant ethnic conflict in its north as well as an overflow of violence from neighbouring Chad and Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, has been on the agenda of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, an intergovernmental advisory body of UN entities and Member States, international financial institutions and others set up in 2006 to coordinate the world community’s aid in post-conflict countries.

It has received tens of millions of dollars from the Commission’s Peacebuilding Fund to support security sector reform, economic revitalization and the rule of law.

“I think it has the potential of becoming a good story,” Ambassador Jan Grauls of Belgium, head of the Commission’s efforts for CAR, told reporters. “Up to a couple of years ago, nobody talked about the CAR, it is as if it had been erased from the map. It had become a kind of forgotten emergency.” But then peace accords were signed between the warring parties.

“The Central African Republic deserves to be looked at with other eyes,” he said. “It’s not the Central African Republic any more [that] it used to be, that’s in our memories, but it’s changing and it’s changing for the better, and it deserves the support of the international community.”

If the elections and the DDR are completed successfully, a donors’ conference will be held next spring, he added.

Those attending today’s event include Mr. Ban, CAR President François Bozizé, and high-level representatives of the World Bank, existing and potential donor countries, and regional organization.

ENDS

© Scoop Media