LM Report 2000

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CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

The Central African Republic (C.A.R) has not signed the Mine Ban Treaty. Landmine Monitor has found no evidence to indicate that the country has taken any steps over the past year to join. An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Landmine Monitor that he knew nothing about the Mine Ban Treaty and that since CAR had no landmines it was not of interest.^[1]

C.A.R was absent from the vote on UNGA Resolution 54/54B calling for universalization of the Mine Ban Treaty in December 1999. C.A.R. did not participate in the First Meeting of States Parties in Maputo in May 1999 and it has not attended any of the intersessional meetings of the ban treaty. It is not a party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and is not a member of the Conference on Disarmament.

The C.A.R. is not believed to be mine-affected. There is no evidence that the C.A.R. has ever produced or exported landmines. Government officials acknowledge that there is no practical way to control the movement of weapons, including landmines, across the C.A.R.’s territory, due to a near-complete lack of border controls. It is assumed that C.A.R. has a stockpile of AP mines, but no information is available.

When France withdrew its garrisons from Bangui and Bouar in early 1998, no stocks of landmines were left behind. Nor is the Francophone African peacekeeping force, which went in to deal with a crisis and army mutiny in early 1997 in C.A.R., believed to have used mines. The successor peacekeeping force, the U.N.-backed MINURCA, is also not believed to have used landmines.

[1] Telephone interview with Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, Bangui, 14 July 2000.