Central African Republic - Bangui International Airport

Insecurity continues to hamper humanitarian assistance to 100,000 IDPs living at the airport site in Bangui.

Key events:

5^th December 2013: Influx of internal displacement begins (estimated 5000 people) to appear near the airport.  The French army (operation SANGARIS) provide some security;

12, 18 December 2013: Failed attempts to distribute food. Looting by people from outside the site;

23 December 2013: To better organize the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) site, the site was divided into 9 areas with the support of resource persons living on the site. The population is estimated at 55,000 people;

31 December 2013: Attacks on the night of December 30-31 at Don Bosco site, creating further displacement.

The runway of Bangui Airport was occupied by hundreds of IDPs for many hours causing the temporary suspension of flights – including humanitarian flights.

The site population is estimated at 100,000 people spread over 11 areas.

1 January 2014: Fighting near the site occurred and 9 IDPS were wounded (verification in progress);

2 January 2014: MSF announced that it would reduce its health activities at the site following two days of shooting near its clinic. The shooting wounded 40 people and killed two children.

CCCM Cluster in Central African Republic

The CCCM Cluster has been activated in CAR with UNHCR leading the Cluster and supported by IOM. A CCCM Rapid Response Team (RRT) Officer has been on the ground since 18 December 2013 to advocate for the activation of the cluster as operating as CCCM Cluster Coordinator.  The CCCM RRT Officer, in collaboration with the Protection and Shelter Clusters, has been looking in depth into the IDP situation at the Bangui airport. Another CCCM RRT Officer is going to be deployed this week to support the necessary CCCM related activities.

Within sites, the CCCM Cluster in CAR will focus on (in addition to other key elements):

-          Community engagement and self-empowerment;

-          Population information management;

-          Coordination and monitoring of assistance and services;

-          Ensuring the strategic and response priorities are complementary and coherent with other clusters (for example, Shelter and Protection)

            and implementing partners.

See CCCM Site Profile: Airport 01/05/2014 (in French), available at: https://car.humanitarianresponse.info/fr/document/cccm-site-profile-airport-05012014