Queen’s Speech

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the infamy with which the Central African Republic was known due to its brief, self-declared existence as an empire under Emperor Bokassa has been replaced by such anonymity that it is now known only to the tea-time audience of BBC1. “Central African Republic” is a frequent pointless answer on the popular quiz show of that name. I wish briefly to shine a spotlight on the Central African Republic, which even as a failed state remains one of the world’s donor orphans.

Despite the sacrifices of the French peacekeepers and the AU force over many months, even the capital Bangui has not been fully secured. On 25 May, three young Muslim men on their way to a reconciliation football match were set upon and publicly dismembered. A reprisal attack on 28 May on a Catholic church that was housing 8,000 internally displaced people saw the priest attacked in front of the congregation, grenades thrown and 15 people killed. Not surprisingly, a few days later a mosque was attacked. Whatever the UN might label this violence legally, it is clearly now of a religious nature. Not surprisingly 97% of the Muslim population in Bangui has fled, often assisted by peacekeeping forces so inadequate in number that evacuating populations under attack was their only option. Many of these people have gone to the more remote and less fertile north-eastern border region with Chad, and while the world has had its focus on Syria and South Sudan, the CAR has now been de facto partitioned on religious lines and the hatred and distrust among communities shocks even the most experienced aid workers who visit the nation. Sources now report that young Muslim men in the north-east with little to do but much anger are listening to or reading extremist messages on smartphones, and Hausa-speaking people from northern Nigeria are reported to be among their number. It is reported that, on Saturday 26 April 2014, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri called on all Muslims to provide military support to their brothers in the Central African Republic. This is increasingly a regional security crisis, and as the Lord’s Resistance Army area operates with impunity in the south-east of the Central African Republic, why would Boko Haram not think it could do the same?

The entire 4.8 million population of the CAR is affected. There are over a third of a million refugees in neighbouring countries and half a million internally displaced people. The UN fund remains chronically underfunded at just 31% of the $565 million needed. To its credit, the UK is the second-largest bilateral donor, but at a relatively modest £23 million. Healthcare is run by MSF, 75% of schools are shut, those that are open are run by NGOs and there is no judicial system or police. Although the UK is not the lead nation in the CAR, we are seen as a trusted neutral arbiter and there is much we can do. Will the Minister encourage the EU and the UN to devise a 10-year development plan for the CAR? Will he outline whether the UK will reassess its lack of ambassadorial presence in the CAR? The United States has recently announced its decision to appoint a special representative.

Elections are scheduled for February 2015, but the population has dispersed and the national archives have been destroyed. With no state infrastructure, there is no electoral register. With no security, people will not give their names to any official documentation. Would my noble friend the Minister please investigate whether the African Union or UN could send a team of electoral commission officials, especially from other African nations, to assess if holding an election is possible in the timescale envisaged?

However, there is a good news story in all of this: the close relationship and reconciliation work being done by the Catholic Archbishop of Bangui, the nation’s Imam, Imam Layama, and the leader of the evangelical churches, Reverend Guérékoyame-Gbangou. I was recently encouraged to learn of a trip by the UK Muslim charities fund and CAFOD, the Catholic charity, which went together to visit the nation. DfID must allocate more money to the CAR, but perhaps this could be done in the form of a fund for consortiums of aid agencies to bid for, which must include our own Catholic, Muslim and evangelical agencies. What better way to support the brave interfaith reconciliation work in the CAR than to send our aid through the same representatives? For every £1 we spend on this aid would then also be £1 spent on reconciliation. If the Christian community in the CAR gets its food aid from UK Muslim aid agencies, this will help to rebuild much-needed trust among the communities. The domestic splash-back would be some much-needed encouragement to UK Muslims at the moment.