UN stresses CAR disaster warning
A senior UN envoy has called for a huge international effort for the Central African Republic to avoid a huge crisis.
Speaking to the BBC in the capital, Bangui, John Ging of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the country was in a “mega-crisis”.
Mr Ging said that many in the population were living in fear because of religious and ethnic attacks.
Last week the UN warned that the country faced disaster because of people fleeing the conflict to pack into overcrowded camps with poor sanitation.
It said that measles has broken out at the airport in the capital, Bangui, where about 100,000 people are seeking refuge from clashes between rival militias.
Mr Ging said that “massive displacement” in the CAR had meant that almost a million people have left their homes throughout the country.
He called for a huge international effort to tackle the situation.
“Everything has been lost,” he said, “homes have been destroyed, facilities, schools and medical centres completely ransacked and destroyed [along with] water wells.” He said that the “wanton destruction was hard to conceive” and there was “a huge task ahead for the whole community... Both domestically and internationally to help the people of this country to rebuild their lives”.
A UN investigation into the conflict on Tuesday found widespread sectarian killings of civilians and sexual violence.