Central African Republic risks return to major conflict

GENEVA — Deadly ethnic fighting in the Central African Republic could descend into a much larger-scale conflict if nothing is done to disarm combatants and defuse tensions, a UN report said. With a fifth of the population displaced since the mainly Muslim Seleka rebels ousted the president in 2013, provoking a backlash from Christian anti-balaka militias, UN peacekeepers are struggling to contain simmering violence.

The UN human rights working group on mercenaries and foreign fighters said it “strongly senses that the possibility of another armed conflict is likely, if foreign armed actors, along with local armed groups, are not effectively dismantled and suppressed.”

National security forces are too weak to tackle armed groups and counter the spillover from conflicts in neighbouring countries, and UN military personnel, who number just over 10 000, have failed to convince locals that they can protect them, the report said.

Ugandan and US forces pulled out earlier this year, declaring “success” against the Lord’s Resistance Army, a regional militia notorious for two decades of abducting children to use as fighters and sex slaves.

On Thursday, Amnesty International issued its own report detailing what it said was the systematic rape and murder of civilians in ethnic fighting.

“If the UN’s mandate in the Central African Republic is to mean anything, civilians must be better protected,” the rights group’s Joanne Mariner said. – Nampa-Reuters

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