Press conference by Mohamed Ag Ayoya, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, MINUSCA, on the humanitarian situation, response and challenges in the Central African Republic (CAR).
Ag Ayoya said CAR country is “utterly Africa's overlooked middle child, one that is squeezed, landlocked, and often forgotten inside a troubled region.”
The humanitarian crisis in CAR is worsening.
Due to violence against civilians and insecurity in areas outside urban centers, several million people remain vulnerable, their livelihoods are eroding, and they have limited access to food and basic services, such as water, health care, and education.
Addressing journalists on Wednesday (6 Sep) in New York on the humanitarian situation, response, and challenges in CAR, Ag Ayoya expressed the country’s need for longer-term solutions.
“We cannot continue just doing firefighting. The time to think about long-term solutions is right,” he stated.
Earlier this morning, during a briefing on the Humanitarian Situation in CAR, Ag Ayoya noted, “In 2023, 3.4 million people, which is about 56 percent of the population, need humanitarian assistance and protection. Repeated confrontation between various parties to the conflict results in a continuously volatile security situation, causing population movements. One in five Central Africans is either internally displaced or has found refuge in a neighboring country.”
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), CAR now has one of the world’s highest proportions of critically food-insecure people.
This deepening food insecurity has forced families to adopt extreme coping methods that have caused an increase in gender-based violence (GBV), affecting thousands of women and girls.
“Every hour,” Ag Ayoya said, “two women or girls are victims of gender-based violence, with over 11,000 cases reported in the first six months of 2023. The real number is much higher than that because, as you all know, these cases are not always reported.”
At the same time, he added, the response to gender-based violence is among the most underfunded.
Five of the 10 sub-prefectures that recorded an increase in GBV cases are in phase 4 of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale, just one step away from famine.
