Forced to leave their country because of recurrent violence since 2013, around 700,000 Central Africans are refugees in Central Africa. A cycle of crises that led the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (HRC) to propose the first regional meeting on the issue of forced displacement in Yaoundé.
A conference has been taking place since Monday in Yaoundé in Cameroon, which has 345,000 Central African refugees, or almost half. The idea of this meeting is to go beyond the humanitarian response alone. This resulted in the Yaoundé declaration in which the States participating in the meeting committed themselves to several objectives, including the creation of “ a solution-oriented monitoring and coordination mechanism for countries affected by the Central African crisis “. This mechanism, including the seven countries affected by the Central African crisis, will be co-chaired by the Central African Republic as well as a rotating co-chairmanship.
Regional Ministerial Conference on Central African Refugees: the SG of MINREX, HE Chimoun Oumarou reads the Yaoundé Declaration. pic.twitter.com/7pjiFID2jJ
— Cameroon Diplomacy / Cameroon Diplomacy (@diplocam_minrex) April 27, 2022
“Strengthening social cohesion” with refugees
For Fatoumata Kaba, one of the UNHCR spokespersons, the aid should above all make it possible to reintegrate the refugees and facilitate their administrative procedures: “ The crisis will not end overnight. And so, while the refugees are in the countries of asylum, we must do everything possible so that the refugees can find employment, have access to education, to all kinds of social services, that they can have the identity documents that are withheld. For example, a Central African refugee who does not have a recognized identity document because all he has as a document is a UNHCR document, cannot necessarily benefit from credits, because a bank will not recognize this document. »
Many of them live in areas where they could get by if they had space to farm
” The other thing is access to land because there are a lot of them living in areas where they could get by, if they had space to farmsays Fatoumata Kaba. Of course, all this while supporting the communities that welcome them. We cannot help refugees without providing some support with the idea of strengthening social cohesion. »
According to the count of the High Commissioner for Refugees, Central Africans who have left their homes in the face of the crises are in Cameroon (345,000) in the DRC (212,000), in Chad (119,000), in Congo-Brazzaville (29,000) , Sudan (28,000) and South Sudan (2,500).
► To read also: Refugees: UNHCR warns of the situation in CAR, the Sahel or Uganda