Humanitarian concerns for Central African Republic

(Vatican Radio) On-going violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) has displaced hundreds of thousands, and has created a dire humanitarian situation in the region.

The Séléka’ rebel coalition launched a series of attacks last December, forcing some 206,000 people to be internally displaced, and 50,000 others to flee to the neighbouring countries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, and Chad.

Valerie Kaye is in charge of French communications for Caritas Internationalis. She spoke with Vatican Radio about the humanitarian situation for the people of the CAR, saying how social services in the region are not functioning.

Children in the country are “worried because they are going to do a whole year without schooling,” she said. “The hospitals have been sacked, and are lacking medicine. The banks are not working… All of your basic services have been affected.”

Ever since the Séléka’ took over, she said, those in the region do not have a sense of “settlement, or peace, or any progress.”

Kaye said that the president of CAR office of Caritas Internationalis, Archbishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga of Bangui, is “extremely worried by the route they [the rebels] will choose because they are targeting and destroying the fabric of society.”

Listen to Ann Schneible’s interview with Valerie Kay: