Urgent call for more UN peacekeepers

Senior Catholic and Muslim clerics of the Central African Republic (CAR) have asked the UN to deploy more peacekeepers immediately to halt a spiral of violence that has pitted Muslims against Christians, writes Ellen Teague.

Archbishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga of the capital Bangui and Imam Omar Kobine Layama said that existing French and African Union peacekeeping forces are insufficient to maintain law and order. They warned that “the CAR remains on the verge of a war with religious aspects”.

The call comes as churches are overwhelmed with displaced people. “The situation is very chaotic and worsening all the time,” said Fr Cyriaque Gbate Doumalo, secretary general of the country’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference. “All our churches and parishes are inundated with displaced people,” he reports, and “whole districts of Bangui are deserted, while even those in the relative safety of Catholic centres are living in total fear.”

Bangui’s major seminary is sheltering 12,000 people; the bishops’ conference secretariat is hosting 600, half of them children.

The number of internally displaced people in the country has more than doubled to 935,000 since December. The nation has been virtually lawless since the government of the mainly Christian country was overthrown in March 2013 by Muslim rebels.