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| Zainab Hawa Bangura greeting people during her recent visit to Central African Republic. [PHOTO: UNifeed] |
New York: Zainab Hawa Bangura, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General
on Sexual Violence in Conflict, has warned that a situation worse than that in
Somalia could develop in the Central African Republic (CAR) unless the
international community and all stakeholders addressed the serious challenges
confronting that country.
There was a need for comprehensive and concerted efforts to
help the Central African Republic, she emphasized at a press conference, adding
that the Government’s inability to provide security and protection was the
result of a “very weak” military. Unable
to cover the sparsely populated but vast country, its control was basically
confined to the capital, Bangui, she added.
Briefing on her recent eight-day visit to the Central
African Republic, she said the level of helplessness she had heard and seen in
the faces of people who had endured more than 20 years of living in a
“literally non-existent” country had convinced her of the urgent need for all
stakeholders — beginning with the Government itself, armed groups, the
international donor community and the United Nations — to step in and turn the
situation around. Having briefed the Deputy
Secretary-General earlier, Bangura said, she would now prepare a comprehensive
report on her visit for presentation by the Secretary-General to the Security
Council in March.
She said the victims of sexual violence had no support
because the Government was not in control of the entire country, and there
were, therefore, no hospitals or health facilities to help them. The visit had given her the opportunity to
understand the difficulties and challenges the Central African Republic faced;
to identify the seriousness of sexual violence in conflict; and to recognize
the prevailing denial and culture of silence relating to sexual violence and
conflict.
Bangura said she had met all stakeholders and
signatories to the June 2008 Libreville Comprehensive Peace Agreement,
including the President, armed groups, women parliamentarians, the donor
community, international non-governmental organizations, and the United Nations
country team. She had also met the head
of the Human Rights Commission and visited two major regional headquarters,
where she had met both victims and survivors — women affected by sexual
violence, as well as children who had been abducted and then released.
The visit had culminated in the signing of two
“communiqués”, she said. They included
one aimed at getting the Government’s commitment to address sexual violence and
ensure the success of ongoing security- and justice-sector reforms, and another
intended to ensure that the Government actually addressed the issue of
conflict-related violence. The first
communiqué was a result of the realization that, in dialogue with the
Government, during which more than 100 recommendations had been made, no
mention had been made of human rights, accountability for crimes committed, or
addressing impunity.
She said that the single common message that all the women
she had met wished her to pass on both to the Government and to the
international community was their strong desire for peace and the importance of
disarming all armed groups, if normal life was to resume. The conflict in the Central African Republic
had continued for more than two decades, she pointed out, adding that it had
consequently become “like the forgotten conflict”, despite having dragged the
country to its knees.
The Central African Republic’s problems were compounded by
the fragmentation of its Armed Forces, which were “very weak”, to the extent
that the President had been compelled to turn to neighbouring Chad for
protection because his military had neither the capacity nor the resources
required. That sense of helplessness,
from the Head of State down, was so pervasive that people believed they had
been forgotten. “There is this attitude
of hopelessness, that ‘We have been forgotten, nobody is thinking about us; there
is nowhere people are even thinking to help us,’” she said.
Responding to a question, Bangura noted that the biggest
challenge for the country’s disarmament, demobilization and reintegration
committee was the lack of resources to carry out its functions. Although it was able to disarm certain areas,
the committee was unable to carry out the reintegration portion of its mandate,
she noted. That was so even with the
newly pledged support of the World Bank and the release of new funds through
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). To address that weakness, she had asked the
President to strengthen the Ministry of Social Welfare and Promotion of Women,
having realized that the absence of a gender perspective within the
disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process was a major weakness.
Asked whether all armed groups in the country were guilty of
abusing women and children, and how large the presence of the Lord’s Resistance
Army (LRA) was, she said that, by all accounts, almost all the armed groups —
six that had signed the peace agreement so far — had committed sexual
violence. Regrettably, the Government
lacked access to the rest of the country, which made it difficult to determine
a concrete number of victims. That
problem was compounded by the “culture of silence”, she added, expressing hope,
however, that following her extensive discussions with the Government and all
stakeholders, more and more people would be willing to talk.
As for the LRA, she said the best estimate she had been
given was that their numbers could be in the range of 200. Although the group’s presence in the Central
African Republic was small and scattered, the Government had been unable to
stop the LRA’s activities because it neither trusted nor enjoyed complete
control over its own military, and had thus been forced to turn to Chad for
help.