Yearbook 2011
Central African Republic. According to Countryaah official site, President François Bozizé was re-elected in January with just over 64% of the vote and his party Kwa Na Kwa (Labor, nothing but Labor) retained its grip on Parliament with 61 out of 105 seats. The election campaigns and election days were carried out without more serious incidents, but the opposition bitterly complained of major shortcomings in the arrangements and was supported by both domestic election observers and representatives of the African Union. In the second round of the parliamentary elections, voter interest was reported to have been very low since an almost unified opposition called for a boycott. However, the Constitutional Court rejected all complaints and declared Bozizé as the winner. Visit ABBREVIATIONFINDER for the acronym of CAF that stands for the country of Central African Republic.
The president’s toughest opponent in the election, former Prime Minister Ange-Félix Patassé whom Bozizé deposed in a coup in 2003, passed away in April in a Cameroon hospital. Patassé, which suffered from diabetes, had previously on a few occasions been denied leave to seek care abroad.
During the year, the government signed a peace agreement with the last active rebel group, the Patriotic Collection for Justice and Peace (CPJP). Also a breakaway group from the CPJP joined the peace agreement which states that the rebels should be disarmed and re-incorporated into society.
Nonetheless, the internal stability of the Central African Republic had a short duration, when in March 2013 a coalition of armed groups, called Séléka, led a coup against Bozizé: this led to the proclamation of Michel Djotodia, a military and Muslim convert, as the new head of state and the establishment of a National Transitional Council (NTC). Since their advance in 2013 from the north of the country to the capital Bangui in the south, the Séléka they became the protagonists of numerous violence and crimes, the gravity of which forced President Djotodia himself to unilaterally dissolve the rebel militias in September of the same year. However, this decision did not stop the violence and abuse of the Christian civilian population, exasperating the already fragile internal fragmentation of the rebel movement. The religious connotation of the rebel coalition is explained by the fact that the Séléka, in addition to hosting jihadists from neighboring states among their ranks, recruited their men above all from the Muslim provinces of the north, i.e. those most affected by unemployment, poverty and from the repeated marginalization suffered since the first years of François Bozizé’s government. The emergence of a dangerous religious rift between Christians (80% of the population) and Muslims (about 10%), difficult to reconcile in the long term, was a consequence, rather than the cause, of the conflict: the Séléka insurgents they claimed their Islamic identity, employing extremely violent techniques probably learned from jihadist groups. The spread of violence and the constant growth of religiously motivated crimes have consequently led to the creation of Christian self-defense militias (anti-balaka, the ‘anti-machetes’), in order to counteract the action of the Séléka. The acts of the anti-balakas, no less bloody than those of the Séléka, have generated a escalation of inter-community violence, accompanied by looting of businesses and homes and mass killings, as demonstrated by the discovery of community graves in remote areas of the country. Some important international personalities, politicians and human rights activists, have therefore spoken of a real genocide in progress. The political crisis in place since 2013 has generated more than 900,000 internally displaced people (about 25% of the total population), which add up to the 190,000 refugees who fled the country to retreat to refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of Congo, Chad and Cameroon, deepening the food and humanitarian emergency in the country. Despite the presence of numerous multinational forces of peacekeeping (in particular the mission of the Un Minusca and the European one Eufor Central African Republic, led by France), the political, social and internal security situation in the Central African Republic. it is still far from being able to define itself as stabilized.
In January 2014, the self-proclaimed president Djotodia was forced to resign due to the progressive worsening of the Central African political situation. Supported by the Central African Economic Community (Eccas), the C nt has appointed Catherine Samba Panza, former mayor of Bangui, as the new interim head of state. The transitional mandate of Samba Panza mainly consisted in the construction of a new political and institutional structure, aimed at favoring a transition – the least traumatic possible – from a situation of strong authoritarianism to a condition of stable democracy. Neither the government, which proved to be too weak and without a precise strategy, nor the international contingents, committed to containing violence in the Central African Republic, were able to guarantee this new path of political-institutional stabilization. The resumption of inter-religious violence in Bangui and the failure to define an electoral calendar have made the internal situation even more uncertain. In fact, presidential and legislative elections should be held by the end of 2015, as well as a referendum for the approval of the new Constitution; however, international observers are very skeptical about the country’s real transition capacities in the short to medium term.
The conflicts that have crossed the Central African Republic since its independence have prevented the implementation of any development plan and have constituted a strong obstacle to the economic revitalization of the country. In 2009, the International Monetary Fund worked closely with the government to set up a program of reforms but, despite some improvement in the management of the administration (especially in terms of transparency of the public budget), many problems still remain. to overcome.
The country’s economic development is held back by structural weaknesses such as a shortage of transport infrastructure, a largely unskilled workforce and a legacy of inadequate macroeconomic policies. For these reasons, the economy remains mainly based on subsistence agriculture and on activities that escape national accounting: in fact, the practice of exporting and illegal individual trade in raw materials, especially diamonds, is widespread.. It is thus estimated that the informal economy of the Central African Republic is percentagewise greater than many other formal economies of other neighboring countries. The country has one of the highest poverty rates in the world, ranking at the bottom of the Human Development Index ranking. Life expectancy stops at just over 50 years and the death rate is three times higher than the threshold that defines the humanitarian emergency.