WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA Central African Republic
© UNICEF Central African Republic/2009/de Hommel
Children stand in the town of Boura. Deep poverty, resurgent conflict and the flow of refugees from neighbouring countries, have left the country’s children vulnerable to disease and exploitation.
Children and women in crisis
The Central African Republic is struggling to provide for its people, while overcoming internal political conflict ongoing since 2003 and accepting the thousands of refugees from surrounding countries who have sought shelter in the country in recent years. Only 30 per cent of Central Africans have access to clean water and even fewer to sanitation1 – and there are alarming trends in undernutrition and disease. Children can be subjected to sexual violence and forced to join armed groups. Assistance, such as essential immunizations and AIDS education, is often provisional, given the destabilized environment in which most of the country’s women and children are living.
Meeting urgent needs and building resilience in 2011
UNICEF is leading the education and WASH clusters and co-leading the nutrition and shelter and non-food items clusters in the Central African Republic. UNICEF also actively participates in the health, protection, logistics and food security clusters. In 2011, UNICEF will continue to work with the Government of the Central African Republic, other UN agencies, local and international NGOs as well as host communities to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of children and adults.
- UNICEF will develop community protection networks to prevent the recruitment of about 30,000 children who are at risk of conscription into armed groups or government forces.
- Nearly 175,000 people (among them 71,000 children and 9,000 hospitalized patients) will have access to safe water after the construction of 50 new water points and the rehabilitation of 300 existing ones.
- More than 170,000 school-age children will gain access to safe schools after 129 temporary learning and rehabilitation spaces and 65 classrooms are rehabilitated or established in the remote and crisis-affected programme regions.
- 204,000 women and 650,000 children will be treated or supported to prevent their undernutrition when supplies are provided to 55 treatment centres, including 17 newly established outpatient therapeutic feeding centres, in the prefectures of Bamingui Bangoran, Haut Mbomou, Nana Mambere and Vakaga.
- As many as 900,000 people (including 156,000 children) will be able to avoid deadly disease through strengthened vaccination programmes.
- About 7,000 young men and women of reproductive age and 10,000 women will have receive education for HIV and AIDS prevention and care.
Humanitarian funding at work: Highlights from 2010In 2010, UNICEF estimated that US$15,187,221 was needed to fund its humanitarian work in the Central African Republic. As of October 2010, a total of US$5,652,257 had been received, or 37 per cent of the 2010 request. Among key results, 750,000 children were protected from disease by routine vaccinations and by the first phase of a yellow fever immunization campaign. UNICEF helped facilitate the release of 108 children from armed groups. More than 172,000 young children were enrolled in preschool. |
Funding requirements for 2011
UNICEF is requesting US$11,763,000 to carry out its planned activities. UNICEF has aligned its request with the 2011 Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) requirements. Women and children of the Central African Republic, struggling to cope under the diminished capacities of their weakened social infrastructure as well as the effects of crises in neighbouring countries, require the urgent assistance this funding can provide.
More information on achievements of 2010 and the humanitarian action planned for the Central African Republic in 2011 can be found at www.unicef.org/hac2011.
1 Communiqué Final, Table Ronde Sectorielle Eau et Assainissement en RCA’ [Round table on water and sanitation in CAR], Bangui, Central African Republic, 8 October 2009, p 3
UNICEF Emergency Needs for 2011 (in US dollars) Total $11,763,000
