UN in US $9.1-million appeal for war victims

The UN system in the Central African Republic (CAR) appealed to donors on Wednesday for US $9.1 million to help two-thirds of the country's 3.7 million people directly affected by war. The money will be to improve health delivery, food security, human protection and the coordination of humanitarian activities for the 2.2 million beneficiaries, 400,000 of whom are children under five years old and 600,000 women of child-bearing age. Broken down, the health sector will receive $3.06 million, the food sector $4.85 million, humanitarian protection $220,000 and other humanitarian activities $974,000. The emergency programmes, which target the war-ravaged north and east of the country, which were isolated from the rest of the CAR during the fighting, are scheduled to last three months, after which an inter-UN agency consolidated appeal is to be launched with a much wider scope of aid to last between six and 12 months. The UN Children's Fund and the UN World Health Organisation - in partnership with international NGOs - will be dealing with health operations, which will include emergency immunisation, provision of curative care, facilitating access to safe drinking water, and an anti-HVI/AIDS campaign. At the same time, the UN Population Fund will provide reproductive health kits and psychotherapeutic support for rape victims. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will focus on food security. The UN estimates there are 1.4 million vulnerable people in the CAR, including "about 1.2 million in need of emergency food rations". While the WFP will distribute food, the FAO will provide 150,000 farmers with seeds to cover 90,000 ha, to safeguard the agricultural season that normally begins in April-May. The north of the country is the CAR's granary, and the six-month war that affected it has led to price increases. CAR has been through several military crises since the mid-1990s. In the latest of these, which started in October 2002, the former army chief of staff, Francois Bozize, overthrew President Ange-Felix Patasse on 15 March. Inhabitants in the north of the country were badly affected, and the easternmost part isolated from supply routes. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people fled to the bush, while private and public buildings, including schools and health facilities, were looted. In its appeal for funds, the UN system says 58 nursery schools for 1,779 infants, 891 primary schools for 152,443 children, and 40 secondary schools were looted or destroyed. Teachers and pupils have fled the region, which will most likely result in an invalid school year. Since October 2002, there has been no large-scale humanitarian operation in the country's war-affected areas. The UN system has asked the current government to restore security in the countryside so that humanitarian workers can intervene urgently. There have been widespread reports of the presence of remnant pockets of Congolese fighters, with highway robbers still roaming the north and terrorising the public. The Congolese were members of the rebel Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whom Patasse had invited in to help him put down Bozize's rebellion. The continuing presence of these stragglers - left behind when the MLC pulled back to the DRC - has prevented many thousands of displaced people from returning home. Bozize has now appointed governors to the troubled regions in an effort to reassert government authority and restore security.