About hdptcar  

The Humanitarian and Development Partnership Team in the Central African Republic encompasses all partners working to alleviate the country's humanitarian and development crisis.

Situated in the very middle of Africa, the Central African Republic (CAR) is landlocked between Chad, Sudan, DRC and Cameroon. Roughly the size of France or Texas, the country has endured several coups since its independence from France in 1960. While the CAR is rich in agricultural, water and mineral resources, its people are among the poorest in the world. The Central African Republic ranks 172nd out of 177 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index, and almost 70% of the population live on less than 1 dollar a day. After more than 20 years of underdevelopment, the real income of Central Africans is today only 65% of what it was 30 years ago.

Since 2006, the insurgency in the northern prefectures has aggravated the humanitarian situation in the country. It is causing massive displacement of the civilian population, which faces violence committed not only by armed gangs, road-blockers and rebels, but also by governmental forces, which have tended to view the local population as sympathizers to the rebels. As a result, an estimated 212,000 Central Africans have become internally displaced, and some 78,000 have fled into neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Sudan creating a looming humanitarian crisis in a country that has suffered from more than 20 years of under-development.