Central African Republic

Overview

The humanitarian crisis in CAR is characterised by violent conflict which started in 2013 and flared up in 2017 and 2020, forcing millions of people to flee their homes. In 2024, around half a million people remain internally displaced. The crisis is compounded by conflict - an increase in armed violence, conflicts related to transhumance, violations of human rights and international humanitarian law – and environmental and economic deterioration - worsening floods, a socio-economic recession and weak basic services. As a result, 2,8 million people are estimated to need humanitarian assistance in 2024.  

 More than 100 organisations currently provide humanitarian assistance in CAR, helping to alleviate the immediate effects of food insecurity and malnutrition, provide shelter, water, sanitation, health and education services, and protect a population in distress. The majority of implementing organisations are national and international NGOs. The response reached 2 million people in 2023.   

  The humanitarian community in CAR is committed to the guiding principles of proximity, protection, and participation, and has made good progress on improving accountability on a collective level, putting in place coordination structures and collective feedback mechanisms, measuring aid recipients’ perceptions, consulting communities for the elaboration of the humanitarian needs and response plan (HNRP) and demanding minimum accountability standards for fund allocations.    

Our work

We have been operational in CAR since 2019 with the support of UNICEF and GFFO. Since May 2024, we have been working on a project to support Clusters to enhance collective accountability.   
  
Between August 2023 and April 2024, we worked with UNICEF in CAR to ensure that their community engagement strategies are informed by community perceptions. We conducted a mixed-method study to explore communities’ views on the aid and services they receive, and the way they engage with aid providers. The findings were discussed in a series of workshops, and translated into concrete action plans for community engagement.    

Between 2020 and 2023, we conducted qualitative and quantitative studies as part of the Cash Barometer project. We held a series of qualitative interviews with CVA recipients and market traders, asking for their perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic, on protection risks they face at different stages of the process when receiving assistance, and on their reasons for preferring one aid modality over the other. A quantitative survey allowed for further analysis of people’s perceptions of aid.    

Between 2019 and 2021, we supported the Humanitarian Country Team to track eight perception indicators that were included into the Humanitarian Response Plan, as a tool to measure its implementation from the aid recipients’ perspective.   

We also supported the CAR Rapid Response Mechanism and two clusters to improve their accountability practices and developed collective processes to collect and use feedback from aid recipients.