Central African Republic

A top court in Central African Republic has referred its former president, Ange Felix Patasse, and Congo's Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on war crimes charges. Patasse's security forces backed by fighters from Bemba's then-rebel movement in neighbouring Congo and mercenaries from Chad are accused of executing and raping civilians as they put down a coup attempt in the former French colony in October 2002.

A donor conference for the Central African Republic (CAR) began on Monday in the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, organised by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)."New dramas emerge regularly," OCHA said. "Following banditry in the country's north since late December, thousands are still homeless, while 45,000 refugees have fled to Chad, 15,000 of whom have left their homes since June 2000." UN agencies and NGOs struggle to get funding to support the internally disp...read more

The 2006 session of the CODESRIA sub-regional methodological workshops will explore the conditions for the employment and validation of qualitative perspectives in African contexts. To this end, the workshops will be open to all the social research disciplines. These disciplines are uniformly confronted with broadly similar difficulties of understanding social reality and the challenges posed by techniques of data collection and analysis, which, on account of their ''qualitative'' nature, are...read more

At least 2,000 villagers in two provinces in the northwest of the Central African Republic are hiding in the bush without food while an equal number has fled to neighbouring Chad recently to avoid fighting between the army and bandits, local sources said. At the same time, humanitarian workers said on Friday displaced villagers in the provinces of Ouham and Ouham Pende were in dire need of relief aid as insecurity had prevented humanitarian agencies from providing help.

Schools across the Central African Republic (CAR) have reopened and services have resumed in other sectors since civil servants ended their two-month strike over salary arrears on Thursday (January 5). "Our demand over unpaid salaries was partly met, as the government has accepted to pay three months' wages in 30 days," said Noel Ramadane, the vice-chairman of the country's largest trade union, the Union syndicale des travailleurs de Centrafrique. "This shows the goodwill of the CAR authoriti...read more

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