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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 21 February 2006

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Donors pledge support for humanitarian crisis

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON, 21 Feb 2006 (IRIN) - A donor conference for the Central African Republic (CAR) has ended in the Cameroonian capital Yaounde, with funding assurances to the poverty-stricken nation.

"The meeting was successful, but did not go [on] much to address the problems in the Central African Republic," Maurizio Giuliano, the public information officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on Monday at the end of the conference. "This is because decisions were to be made back in the capitals of the donor countries."

Conference officials said donor countries such as Britain and Germany made "strong" assurances of support to the CAR government.

The UN organised the Monday meeting, attended by representatives of 15 donor countries.

Giuliano said traditional donors present assured that they would lobby for funds to be allocated for the crisis. He said Sweden, Denmark, the European Union, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States were among the countries making this pledge.

"Some of the world's great powers have strongly assured us that they will seek their governments' financial assistance to the humanitarian crisis in Central African Republic," he said.

Israel and the United Arab Emirates, he said, were "non-traditional donors who usually assist in kind and who have promised to make gestures".

He added: "While this is a positive sign, this does not go a long way toward addressing the urgent humanitarian needs of the population in Central African Republic."

According to OCHA new crises emerge regularly in the country, were life expectancy continues to fall at a rate of six months every year.

Because of banditry in the country's northwest since late December 2005, thousands are still homeless, while 45,000 refugees have fled to Chad, 15,000 of whom have left their homes since June 2000.

Cameroon was chosen to host the conference because most of the diplomatic missions for the CAR had their representatives resident in the capital, Yaounde, UN Humanitarian Coordinator Joseph Foumbi told a news conference on Monday.

The UN agencies and NGOS that met in Yaounde sought donor funding to end the humanitarian crisis through the Consolidated Appeals Process, a tool OCHA supports.

"We met to talk with the donors about what the situation looks like in the Central African Republic," Foumbi said.

He added: "We presented the exact picture of the situation in this country which is very alarming. The population in the Central African Republic is very vulnerable. People die en masse like in times of war or the explosion of a disease epidemic.

"The lack of hygiene, high level of HIV/AIDS (about 15 percent), poverty and hunger, etcetera, are silently killing the people of Central African Republic. But the reality is not noticed.

"This is why there is need for a rapid mobilisation and intervention by the international community to seek solutions to the humanitarian crisis."

[ENDS]

This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but May not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2006