(MENAFN- QNA) The focus on numerous regional crises and conflicts in the world is fast making the Central African Republic (CAR) the largest forgotten humanitarian crisis.
Around 60 percent of its population needs urgent aid, including nearly 900,000 people forcibly displaced by the violence since over a year. Human rights groups have describe the genocide in Central Africa as ethnic cleansing.
According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) around 900,000 are forcibly displaced since the outbreak of violence in December 2013.
The United Nations refugee agency has said there are more than 460,000 refugees from the CAR in neighbouring countries and some 436,000 people are internally displaced. In the country, a total of 2.7 million people out of a population of 4.6 million are in need of humanitarian aid, but assistance programmes remain "dramatically underfunded".
UN Humanitarian Coordinator Claire Bourgeois said, "We must prevent the Central African Republic from becoming a forgotten crisis."
"The current funding for the strategic humanitarian response does not allow us to ensure the protection of all these displaced persons or to provide the minimum of what is needed to meet the huge humanitarian needs," she said.
"Humanitarian assistance programmes both for the Central African Republic and the Regional Refugee Response Plan remain dramatically underfunded, with funding levels of only 14 per cent for programmes inside CAR and 9 per cent of the refugee programmes in the neighbouring countries," the refugee agency said.
According to the World Health Organization only 55 per cent of the health facilities are functioning in a country that has among the world’s highest child and maternal mortality rates, and noted that other pressing crises like Syria and Yemen are siphoning off critically needed funding from the CAR.
UNHCR and partners are struggling to provide an adequate level of assistance to the refugees in the four neighbouring countries: Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"It is critical that the international community does not forget about the Central African Republic", the agency quoted Liz Ahua, its Regional Refugee Coordinator. "Important progress has been made and we cannot allow these gains to be undone because of lack of funding and support."
The Central African Republic conflict is a civil war between the Seleka rebel coalition and government forces that started December 10, 2012
According to 2010 estimates, about 80 percent of the population of the Central African Republic are Christians. Islam is practiced by 15 percent of the population. Most of the Muslims of Central Africa live in the north near the border with Chad.
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