Submitted by crinadmin on
In July and August 2008, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) conducted a fact-finding mission to the Central African Republic (CAR) to research and report on the protection and assistance needs of displaced children. Internally displaced children in CAR face severe protection problems from ongoing insecurity and violence. They have suffered trauma after witnessing extreme levels of violence such as the killing of family members when their villages were attacked by road bandits known as Zaraguina or coupeurs de route. During these attacks, some displaced children, including girls, have been abducted to work as porters of stolen property or kidnapped for ransom. Many others have been recruited into armed forces or groups, and processes for their release are delayed due to a stalled peace process and because proper protection and rehabilitation programmes have yet to be funded and launched. The nutrition, water and sanitation, health, and shelter needs of CAR’s displaced children remain largely unmet. Many are in urgent need of adequate shelter, having been forced to sleep outdoors during the rainy season, exposed to higher risks of contracting malaria or respiratory infections. Displaced children face economic exploitation as they are forced to work in fields belonging to host communities in exchange for food or meagre pay. Finally, displaced children from minority groups such as the Peuhl face ethnic discrimination, not least because many host communities have the mistaken perception that all Peuhl are road bandits. The government of CAR and the international community have not adequately addressed these protection concerns, for various reasons. The government lacks a specific policy and legal framework to protect IDPs in general, and internally displaced children in particular; and state security and social services are almost totally absent in the north of the country. International humanitarian organisations have not focused specifically on displaced children’s needs, and so have been unable to meet them in timely and efficient ways; and a wider presence of child-mandated organisations working on the ground is urgently needed in areas of displacement. It will take a concerted effort on the part of both the government and the international community in CAR to redress this state of neglect. A window of opportunity has opened for CAR in the form of increased development funding for 2009, including $600 million pledged at a landmark donor meeting in Brussels in October 2007, to be disbursed over the next three years. Humanitarian funding for CAR increased tremendously in 2008, and by the end of the year the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) may prove to be one of the best-funded in the world (it was 91 per cent funded at the time of publication of this report). Development and humanitarian funds must be used to give displaced children in CAR an opportunity to rebuild their lives after the devastating effects of violence and neglect. Further information
pdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/State_of_Neglect_-_Displaced_Children_in_CAR[1]...