UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT of ORAL EVIDENCE to Be Published As HC 888

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 888

HOUSE OF COMMONS

ORAL EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE THE

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE

CRISIS IN THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

TUESDAY 3 DECEMBER 2013

LYNNE FEATHERSTONE MP, RT HON. MR STEPHEN O’BRIEN MP AND ANDREW MCCOUBREY

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 36

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the International Development Committee

on Tuesday 3 December 2013

Members present:

Sir Malcolm Bruce (Chair) Fiona Bruce Sir Tony Cunningham Pauline Latham Jeremy Lefroy Fabian Hamilton Fiona O'Donnell Peter Luff Chris White ______

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Lynne Featherstone MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, DFID, Andrew McCoubrey, Deputy Head of Africa Regional Development, DFID, and Rt Hon. Mr Stephen O’Brien MP, UK Special Envoy for the Sahel, gave evidence.

Q1 Chair: Good morning, colleagues. Just for the record, Lynne, I wonder if you could introduce Andrew. Lynne Featherstone: Do you want to introduce yourself? Andrew McCoubrey: Thank you very much, Minister. I am Andrew McCoubrey, Deputy Head of Africa Regional Development at the Department for International Development.

Q2 Chair: It was just for the record, really. We appreciate that. Thank you all for coming in. As you will appreciate, the Central African Republic has not been a focus of this Committee’s attention, but clearly the situation there has deteriorated to such an extent that the Committee thought, at the very least, we should try to explore what is going on and the extent to which the UK is able to provide assistance. My understanding is that the UK has now pledged £15 million, and I wonder, Lynne, if you might just talk us through how we have reacted. Obviously we do not have an embassy there; we do not have an office there, so what is the basis on which we have responded? What is the target on which we are spending the money? What kinds of criteria does DFID use when something like this comes up? Lynne Featherstone: Clearly, it is an evolving and very complex situation and, you are right, we are not on the ground there in the way that we are in DFID-operated countries, for example. The way we are approaching the humanitarian assistance is really a staged process, so the agencies are requesting us. The first £5 million was around immediately improved water and sanitation, access to health care and emergency nutrition and, probably most crucially, the funding for humanitarian flights—I am sure we will get on to access as an issue. The next tranche, the £10 million that the Secretary of State announced on 29 November, is about allowing the Red Cross, the UN and others to step up their relief

2 programmes. They are now saying we need to scale up work, and this next tranche of money is about scaling up what they are doing. That staged approach really is about what they need, when they need it. We stand ready to help. We are not the lead country on this, as you rightly say, but it is an evolving and complex situation, and obviously political moves are happening at the same time. If the UN resolution goes through on Thursday, then that will be a bit of a game changer, because then there will be a mandate for extra troops. Really you need the troops to stabilise before the agencies can move forward.

Q3 Chair: At this stage, then, from what you are saying, the money is going through NGOs and other kinds of organisations that have a presence on the ground. We are really supportive of people already there, rather than trying to do it for ourselves. Lynne Featherstone: Exactly.

Q4 Sir Tony Cunningham: I just wonder, in all of this, what discussions you have had with the EU, both at a multilateral level and at a bilateral level, particularly with France. Lynne Featherstone: France is the lead nation in all of this. We are working with France to see what support we might be able to offer, and they at the moment are trying to evaluate what they might need. Clearly, that has moved on since we last had discussions. The discussions are with the EU and the UN mainly, and of course the AU now, through the international contract group as well.

Q5 Sir Tony Cunningham: Does that include ECHO? Lynne Featherstone: Yes, we are working with ECHO. In fact, we have had two monitoring missions, one of which has just returned this weekend from DRC, working with ECHO specifically. They have been working through NGOs. We have to work with NGOs on the ground, and they have been trying to get access to the places that are most difficult. They are working with ICRC and with Solidarity International, but they could not actually get to Bossangoa.

Q6 Chair: Is there a European Commission office in the country? Andrew McCoubrey: Yes. There is an ECHO representative in Bangui. Chair: There is no actual Commission office; there is an ECHO representative. Andrew McCoubrey: Yes, and there is an EU office as well.

Q7 Sir Tony Cunningham: I just feel that it is very important, because ECHO has a huge budget, is a major player and does not get a great deal of recognition, so it is important that, when you have people on the ground, you use them. Lynne Featherstone: We are working through ECHO.

Q8 Fabian Hamilton: Mark Kaye from Save the Children recently said, “This isn’t just a forgotten crisis from the coup” of March 2013. “This country has been largely ignored for the best part of a decade now.” As we have already said, there is no UK diplomatic representation in the Central African Republic, but I wonder, Minister and your colleagues, why the CAR has been forgotten for so long. Do you think there are any other countries that have been similarly ignored, especially in Central Africa? Lynne Featherstone: It would be true to say that our focus has always been on the countries with which we have primary relationships. It is quite a challenge to keep up with what happens in African countries, but I do not think the Central African Republic has been so much forgotten as not in our primary sight. It has had a legacy, as you rightly say, of coups, of food security crises and of poor development. The people living there kind of adapt

3 around it. To us that would be an impossible situation to live with. I do not think it is as forgotten. It is surrounded; it is landlocked, and its trade is very difficult. It has severely limited ability to trade because of its unstable and volatile neighbours all the way around it. It is right in the middle of a difficult territory altogether. As well as the turbulent neighbourhood, it has really been beset by political difficulties. It has had five coups. All in all, it is not so much forgotten as really an impossible challenge at many levels.

Q9 Fabian Hamilton: As Sir Tony said, we are part of the European Union. I just wonder whether there are any other countries nearby or in the region where similar crises may be occurring but, because we have no direct relationship, we are not involved and we do not see it happening. Lynne Featherstone: We work through our ambassador in Cameroon, who also looks over Guinea and Chad, so there are a number of countries in which we do not have direct involvement, but that is the job of that ambassador: to look across the region. The ECHO office has increased its engagement in the Central African Republic. It started with a budget of €8 million at the beginning of the year and it is now up to €20 million. At the moment the conflict, or the instability, is mainly contained within the borders of the Central African Republic, but clearly there is some overspill and some refugees. Of course, it is a region in which there are many volatile and insecure countries, and that is one of the challenges in this part of Africa. Chair: I do not know whether you might wish to comment, Stephen O’Brien. Mr O'Brien: Good morning, Chairman, and good morning to Members of the Committee. Directly addressing the point raised by Mr Hamilton, when you are looking at the areas of need, of course they can arise in any one of the 54 countries of Africa or, indeed, elsewhere in the world. The humanitarian response, which is currently what we are focused on, is inevitably going to be exacerbated by conflict and fragility. You talk about this as an overlooked and forgotten nation, and ask if there are others that we need to be careful about. It is natural that we will have a better focus on those with whom we either have had historical or current relationships, or where we have equities, because we have either training and investors there or people working in them. It is most interesting that, as it happens, as part of my Sahel brief as Prime Minister’s Envoy to the Sahel, in which CAR is not characterised in terms of geography or conditions, a bookend of the Sahel is Chad, over on the east, which is immediately to its north. Chad and the Central African Republic have an extremely close effect on each other. I was going to say inter-dependency, but actually it would be to wrongly characterise their relationship as something equal. It is not. The most important thing to remember is that, whilst your question is centred on the EU, for political security and general engagement with nation states, the primary focus has to be the United Nations. That is where, as a responsible member of the three Western permanent members amongst the P5, we always seek to play an extremely responsible role in identifying, if instability, fragility or conflict is occurring, the drivers of instability, some of which can be addressed by what you have been asking the Minister about and most of which have to be set in a political context. There will have to be a political solution to create the conditions for security, because even with all the good work that DFID and others are going to seek to put in play with their £15 million, there has to be access. You cannot have access without some form of order. The character of the CAR at the moment is a question of law and order, and we may well develop, where there are powers elsewhere or not.

Q10 Fiona Bruce: We are hearing reports of serious targeting of different ethnic and religious groups in particular. We hear reports of deliberate targeting of Christians. CAR is

50% Christian, 15% Muslim and 35% Animist. To what extent do you think this sectarian violence is driving the crisis and what can we do about that? Lynne Featherstone: Traditionally in Central African Republic, Christians and Muslims have co-existed peacefully. It has not really been that kind of an issue. Of course we are concerned about recent reports of tensions between religious groups, and we very much welcome the work of the religious organisations and NGOs to defuse the tension. We are continuing to work with the EU and the UN to support that work. There is an issue that some of the attacks have been by the Séléka fighters. They are almost all Muslim, and a way of identifying a Séléka has become just saying a Muslim must be a Séléka. Therefore, it is getting conflated in an unhelpful and wrong way. We are working through religious organisations with the NGOs on the ground to target those issues, but they are serious.

Q11 Fiona Bruce: Do you think the international community does enough to recognise that freedom of religion is in fact a fundamental human right? It is an article 18 human right. Should more be done to ensure that the right to express your faith freely is one that should be protected and recognised? Lynne Featherstone: I could not agree with you more but, when you say should not more be done, given the circumstances on the ground it is hard to get in and say, “This is a human right, so do not behave like that.” You need to re-establish law and order in the country. At the moment, it is lawless; it is violent. There is sexual violence. There is all sorts going on. Therefore, the rights and wrongs are not really at the forefront. I am sure all the agencies that work there and all of us absolutely think this is about human rights and freedom to express religion.

Q12 Fiona Bruce: The Foreign Minister of France has said, “The country is on the verge of genocide.” How do we respond to calls that the situation there risks genocide? How do we ensure that we do not see a repeat of what has happened elsewhere? Lynne Featherstone: I am not sure that is the most helpful reference to it, to be quite frank. At the moment, we are trying to work to reduce the tensions that are being caused just by, as I say, mostly this fear: “Is that a fighter or my normal Muslim neighbour?” Therefore, we stand ready to work behind the organisations to defuse the tension, but at this point in time, we are waiting particularly for Thursday, for the United Nations resolution, which will then allow the forces to go in and stabilise the situation to allow access for the humanitarian aid agencies. Then we can be on the ground trying to promulgate the messages of good— protection and security—and we can begin to address the needs of the people, who are in absolute crisis. Mr O'Brien: Whilst the human rights referred to are indivisible—we would not any of us take issue with that—we need to be careful not to characterise this as though it has already become some form of ethnic or religious fight. This is a country that has a long history of grave contested instability, with five coups since its independence in August 1960. The power base of the immediately ousted past President Bozizé was in the west; the traditional area where about 15% to 20% of the population were Muslim or Muslim-type adherents was the north. It has always been a relatively good co-existence between the religious and ethnic groups. What has always been the case is major contesting for power, with people seeking to build and then losing power bases, and becoming guarded by increasingly narrow forms of Praetorian Guard before eventually there is an overthrow. Now, it looks to me based on the evidence that there is a danger that some of the violence is almost post-rationalised by seeking to paint it as a form of ethnic or religious divide. You can see from that from the Séléka, who came in. Djotodia, who is now the President, has apparently officially disbanded it, but the anti-balaka tribes, militias and

5 brigades are now effectively coming back. That seems to be being perpetrated against both Muslims and Christians, and non-faith. We need to accept that it is a major law and order collapse, and a complete collapse of state institutions. We need to be rather careful not to fan the thought of it being immediately pre-genocide. This is more to do with the major collapse of state institutions.

Q13 Jeremy Lefroy: Good morning, Minister and Mr O’Brien. The Security Council was briefed last December on the effects of the Séléka rebel offensive, and there have been regular briefings since then, yet no effective action has been taken until now. Can you explain why there has been such a failure to act on the UN’s behalf? I would also like to pick up on something that Fabian raised earlier about other potential problems that we are not seeing or that may not be visible at the moment. Lynne Featherstone: As I say, I think it was not the focus of our attention or the UN’s attention, and clearly that is something we need to consider more carefully, in that everything is interconnected. Therefore, not seeing this at an early enough stage, and perhaps not making interventions when it was more stable or before this latest coup, just makes the situation deteriorate to the point that it is very difficult to even get agencies on the ground. I think you have a good point. Mr O'Brien: We need to draw a very careful distinction between this current crisis in the CAR and what took place more recently in the Sahel, and Mali in particular. There, the international community became increasingly aware that there was a clear connection and that, as you had local instability, it could give a nursery bed to al-Qaeda and fellow-traveller jihadi-type insurgents. It could give them an opportunity to get a power base, or even to try to get, for the first time in history, a state safe haven as a base. It was very close to the “soft underbelly of Europe”, as it has been characterised. Here, there is no evidence that we have that link between the drivers of instability and insurgency and those who would perhaps be able to use it as a platform for jihadi activity. It is not that there is no evidence, but there is very little, as far as I am aware. That is a big distinction in arresting the international community’s attention on the area. Furthermore—I would suggest this is the right approach—there has been a genuine attempt to try to suggest, maybe because it is the right thing to do for the sake of all the people who live on the African continent, that where a problem arises in Africa, in any of the countries or communities of Africa, then the first port of call ought to be to try to marshal an African solution, mainly under the auspices of the African Union. That is what has been attempted, as you will be aware from the briefings—there has been a series of steps attempted to try to pull the difficulties back that have been emerging in CAR. We have had an agreement at Libreville and more recently at N’Djamena, back in December and then April. Clearly things have failed to take root or to secure anything, so the international community, quite rightly, I think this week, will pass a resolution, and the Franco-Africa Summit in Paris on Friday and Saturday, will also be very important. Jeremy Lefroy: That is a bit of a relief to hear, because sometimes it seems that the UN is only able to focus on one thing at a time. With Syria very much at the forefront, other things go by the board, so it is encouraging to hear that there have been other moves. I would just like at this point, without wanting to set any hares running, put it on the record that I am really concerned about Darfur at the moment and how that, which is in the same region, is becoming a real issue again. Again, it is not being picked up sufficiently by the United Nations, but I do not want to divert it. Chair: We will take note. Jeremy Lefroy: I just want to put that on the record, because that is a point that Fabian was raising earlier—are there crises that are not going noticed?

Q14 Peter Luff: I will start with Stephen if I may. Stephen, you tried to draw a distinction between Mali and Central African Republic just now, but Laurent Fabius, the French Foreign Minister, takes a rather different view. He said last week that “The entire continent stands to lose if” the Central African Republic “becomes a haven for armed criminal gangs or terrorist groups. Experience has taught us how dangerous it is to allow the development of ‘grey areas’ sheltering traffickers and terrorist groups,” and so on. He is actually making a direct parallel with the situation in Mali. Could you just unpack that for the Committee? Do you think the French are right to try to link the two? Mr O'Brien: There are many common factors. These are former French partnership countries. These are countries where there is intense poverty, where there is a history of lack of capacity in terms of any kind of state institutions, where there has been contesting for power through violence and other non-democratic means. There are also some very severe distinctions, as it were, between what was beginning to emerge across the Sahel and what is happening here, which is clearly more local. However, of course it has major ramifications because, like all brigade-type operations that are contesting for power, they tend to form alliances with people across their borders, along ethnic lines, across those who wish to see advantage from often very porous borders and from peoples connecting. There is some suggestion that groups in Darfur are very closely linked to the groups in Vakaga region in the northeast of CAR. This, of course, is raising some evidence, with people having gone to school in Sudan across the border. Yes, there are those links, but there are other comments to make. As it happens, I thought I had seen comments from the French Government that this is not actually something they regard as being similar to Mali, but the French quite rightly see it as their responsibility to stand ready at request, as they did with Mali. A written request has already come from President Djotodia to the French President to seek help for the CAR army to try to enforce law and order. It is off the back of that that the French, I think quite rightly, are seeking to internationalise this problem in order to have some capacity to have a sustainable peacekeeping operation, both African-Union-reinforced at this stage, and possibly—once there is any form of a peace to keep—transmogrifying into a UN peacekeeping operation down the road.

Q15 Peter Luff: Looking at the Minister, obviously there has been a very successful French intervention in Mali recently, where we provided logistical support with the French. What discussions have we had with the defence Departments of the two countries about possible support with the French in this situation? Lynne Featherstone: As I said, we are working with the French. At the moment, certainly the Ministry of Defence is also talking to the French, trying to work out what support they need. It is for them to evaluate and then for us, if we can, to step in and support them. As the resolution is so near—the day after tomorrow—I feel it will be a game-changer to get troops on the ground, and then they will be able to evaluate more clearly what support we may be able to give from the Ministry of Defence.

Q16 Peter Luff: If the French make a request for support, it will be met. Lynne Featherstone: We stand ready to consider any request. Mr O'Brien: We have a precedent of confidence in how to do that, once they have identified their needs, but the main point at the moment is to increase the number of troops at the African Union level, in the MISCA operation. That needs supporting first before it will be possible to define as UN work.

I have just found the quote that I was struggling to find in answer to the first part of your question, Mr Luff. It is actually a quote from the French Minister of Defence, Monsieur Le Drian, who said this is an intervention that is “nothing like that of Mali…CAR is a case of a state disintegrating and battles along the lines of denomination. It is a case of preventing catastrophe from striking and of reconstructing a country that is no longer.” Peter Luff: Moving from 400 to 1,400 troops will require additional support. Lynne Featherstone: That is right; it is an extra 1,000. Peter Luff: French troops.

Q17 Chris White: To take that a little bit further, for the record, what line will the UK Government be taking at the UN Security Council meeting on Thursday? Will it support the deployment of a UN force and, if so, how many men do you think that force will comprise? Lynne Featherstone: Yes, we will support it. My understanding is that that first resolution is about 1,000 extra troops on the ground—a mandate for 1,000 extra, additional to the 400. Mr O'Brien: As you know, there is already UN Resolution 2121 in place. Under chapter 7, where there is the phrase “using all necessary means”, it envisages troops having a role, and they are capable of forging a peace and a security, thus giving access. As a member of the P3 and P5, clearly we are very instrumental in making sure that that is going to be being given. The mandate will be achieved for an African-led international support mission, i.e. MISCA, and that in itself, with a trust fund, can then move towards a UN peacekeeping operation.

Q18 Chris White: Can you expand a little on how you will ensure that the UN force—or a UN force—is sufficiently large? Some experts were talking about a figure of 10,000. Lynne Featherstone: I have not heard that figure, but, as I say, this has been the sort of— Chris White: Would you agree with that? Lynne Featherstone: I am not a military expert. I do not know whether it is 10,000 or 1,000, but the request at the moment is 1,000 additional to the 400. If that is what has been requested, that is what we support. I do not have the judgment on military matters. If that is what the French and MISCA believe is necessary to stabilise an area to provide access in the first place, ultimately, in terms of taking this forward as a return to constitutional government, because there are elections expected in 2015, I do not know how far that would go towards stabilising the whole country. At this point, that is what that resolution is about.

Q19 Chris White: I appreciate you are not a military expert, but do you have an opinion on the size of that? Lynne Featherstone: No, I do not really have an opinion, other than that that is the one I am guided towards by the experts, who say that this is what we need at this point in time. There is the UN resolution to deliver what we need, with a mandate to be proactive. Mr O'Brien: If it is of any help, one can draw from the experience that we have had recently in Mali. There is a population of 14.5 million, in a country twice the size of France. Here, we are talking about a country twice the size of the UK, where we have 4.5 million people. Most of the activity that we need to be concerned about is around Bangui, the capital, right on the southern border with DRC, where we have savannah territory, rather than difficult Sahel, Sahara and desert sands. Most of the activity for those who are either insurgents or seeking to be part of a hold-and-capture-type government is using the technicals—the

8 four-wheel-drive type things—so inevitably the types of forces that are required to have some kind of response have to be of that kind of rapid-reaction configuration. We need to be rather careful not to get obsessed with numbers. It is about their capacity to move rapidly, to hold a line and to give confidence to local communities that there is some semblance of order amongst their communities, rather than simply living in fear of who has the next technical coming around the corner. It is that type of approach. Obviously the Minister is speaking for the Government. I do not technically speak for the Government, so I cannot answer your question in any kind of way that helps. However, I think the French currently have around 500 troops in Bangui, with a view to raising that in short order by 700, up to 1,200, as part of this bridging force, as they call it—this force “de relais”, as Monsieur Le Drian has said. That may be for six, or preferably 12 months. We will have to see what the timeline is. It is the African-led international support mission in CAR, MISCA, for which the proposal is to move from about 2,500 troops, as it is now, to 3,600 troops and see if that can be increased. It is that that needs to be strengthened, because that is the only thing at the moment, albeit under-capacity. That is the only show in town, if you like. We need to try to get that supported, and then we can see whether some kind of order can be restored. It is only once we have that that we have any capacity to do the rest.

Q20 Jeremy Lefroy: Thank you very much, Minister. By my calculation, the bilateral programmes that DFID has with countries bordering on CAR—DRC, Nigeria, South Sudan, Uganda—are more than £600 million a year. If you add up multilateral contributions, that is probably £1 billion a year going into countries bordering on CAR. How do you see the impact of this instability in CAR on those programmes, in which we are investing huge sums of UK taxpayers’ money? Lynne Featherstone: As I said, at the moment the situation is largely confined within borders but, of course, lack of security and effective governance does have the potential to cause problems for neighbours, so it is important, now that our attention is firmly drawn towards CAR, that we monitor and stabilise. We have had two monitoring missions come back. We are not overly concerned at this moment in time about the effect, but I think we have been late to the table on this, to be honest, and it is important that we support the UN resolution. We have been working with international partners over some time but, nevertheless, this has been an unstable state for a very long time. Even though Bangui is relatively calm at the moment, there is a huge amount of instability, violence, looting, gender-based violence and so on and so forth. You are absolutely right: we spend an enormous amount on development. One of the things we are doing is that we have an amount going into CAR at the moment that is development assistance, which is not just about that. We have programmes for maternal and infant care because, ultimately, we need to provide the other side of the coin, if you like, to provide stability that ultimately can be developed. If we do not put development in, we are never going to stabilise it fully for the future. That, in the long term, has to be the way through, along with obviously the political reconstitution of constitutional government. As I say, the starting point at the moment has to be stability in the UN force, giving access to the aid agencies for the humanitarian effort. Also, the overspill at the moment is quite limited, so it has not been a primary concern, but we do have our eye on it. Mr O'Brien: I of course defer to the Minister totally on the humanitarian side. The spillover that I am concerned about is the reported number of refugees. Clearly there are the ones who are internally displaced, and we hear that there are about 1.6 million people in CAR in need of humanitarian assistance and about 1 million at risk of food insecurity, but there are 68,000 refugees at the last figure I saw. They are most likely to go to Chad, but also go into Sudan. It is that border I am most worried about, in terms of the spillover effect, not

9 surprisingly—particularly as we resolve, if Bangui is the capital right in the south and Vakaga seems to be the source of some of the current push for control, how much that is going to have spill back into Sudan.

Q21 Jeremy Lefroy: Of course, some of the neglected tropical diseases that we are all trying to fight against are most resistant to elimination in that part of that world. Therefore, instability is going to make the conditions rifer for them to spread, so I would just ask that we keep an eye very firmly on that. Lynne Featherstone: We are very aware that insecurity has already resulted in a massive increase in the burden of disease, especially in the north-west, where people have fled their homes at very high risk. Malaria is the biggest cause of illness and death in the Central African Republic, where 58% of health visits are around malaria, so there are neglected tropical diseases, yes, but malaria is an issue, and we are aware of that. Mr O'Brien: You will be aware that the Global Fund has, on 23 October, granted a further €15 million to enable 2.3 million mosquito nets across Chad, on the basis that this has exacerbated a major crisis of the malaria control programmes, which anyway were at best not among the most effective across the highest transmission areas in the world.

Q22 Jeremy Lefroy: My final question on the cross-border nature of this is: how accurate are the claims that the Séléka rebel group is largely populated by militia groups from across Africa, including Janjaweed from Darfur, Boko Haram from Nigeria and al-Shabaab from Somalia? Lynne Featherstone: I have no information on the composition of the Séléka. I apologise for that. I can write to the Committee with further information. Mr O'Brien: Technically of course, Séléka has been disbanded. There are rather uncorroborated and shallow reports about a composition of the nature you describe. This appears to be mainly about internally driven insurrection, power contestation and a sense of grievance—I think they are probably very real grievances—among a Muslim minority from the north, but not really fuelled by a sense of them being Muslim. It is more a sense of them being excluded and disengaged by their geography.

Q23 Chair: Is that not partly to do with the fact that the international community gets more agitated when they think these groups are involved? If you want to provoke intervention, you magnify the threat. Mr O'Brien: I think that is right. Lynne Featherstone: It is a very complicated picture, so I would be very happy to write to the Committee with the details, as far as we know, of the composition of Séléka. Mr O'Brien: Séléka does have, and Djotodia has had, an ability, with a website and so forth, to have communication with the outside world, which has given them a certain power base. I would suggest that has been one of their competitive advantages and one reason why they are where they are. Also, following Libreville, they were very much talking to their neighbours about support and must have got an impression, I suspect, that perhaps their neighbours were not prepared to come and stand behind Bozizé at the time when that coup took place, whereas Bozizé was trying to forge alliances with South Africa. I think it would be appropriate on another occasion to raise questions as to what South Africa’s role has been in this, when one looks back to March.

Q24 Fiona Bruce: Minister, you recently withdrew bilateral programmes in Niger, Cameroon and Burundi, close neighbours of the CAR. Of course, Burundi has for some time provided considerable troop numbers contributing to efforts to stabilise matters in the Congo.

Do you regret now having such a limited presence in these areas, part of one of the world’s poorest regions, which are seen very much as a potential emerging hub for terrorist activity? Lynne Featherstone: The Multilateral Aid Review was the guide in all that we did and all that followed, in terms of where we withdrew and where we did not withdraw. In hindsight, would you say Burundi, which I know has kept the Chair of the Committee exercised and many others— Chair: The whole Committee. Lynne Featherstone: He has never lost an opportunity to raise it with me. All I can say is that those decisions were made. Whether it contributes more or less, the whole region is unstable and is poor. It is volatile and difficult. Whether it made that difference, I really could not say.

Q25 Fiona Bruce: Do you think that those decisions should be revisited now? Lynne Featherstone: Probably not at this moment in time, but all I can say to the Committee is that I am well aware of its desire and its belief that we were wrong in our decision to withdraw our bilateral programme in Burundi. We keep everything under review. Chair: That is a very helpful response, thank you.

Q26 Pauline Latham: Thank you very much. Following the coup in March this year, CAR was suspended from EITI. Do you think that was the right decision, and do you think it should continue, or should it be reinstated? Andrew McCoubrey: The decision was certainly the right one at the time. It should be kept under review. When there is a more stable Government and recognised Government, perhaps after elections, that issue could perhaps be revisited.

Q27 Pauline Latham: It is very important for countries to be compliant. Paul Collier has said that, very often, if a country has a lot of natural resources, that can inflame conflict. Do you think that is right in this case? Lynne Featherstone: My patch is Africa, which is basically full of riches, and it is always a blessing or a curse. It can inflame things. In fact, Mr Lefroy referred to Darfur, where a lot of the fighting has been around the mines, to be quite frank. It is always a source of difficulty. EITI is very important, but right now is not a moment when it takes the highest priority.

Q28 Pauline Latham: Do you think it is a particular factor in this case? Lynne Featherstone: I do not know whether it was a factor. It may have been a factor. I do not know what fighting there was around the resources. Most of what you see—a lot of what I have seen—is about ethnic, tribal or whatever differences and fighting for control of scarce resources. I do not know in this particular case, but in the general it is often the case. Mr O'Brien: As I am sure you know, CAR has gold, diamonds and uranium, and there is some suggestion that some oil could be exploited up in the north-east in Vakaga. The only evidence so far is that diamonds are playing the part that they do when they are not under the Kimberley Process and therefore become dirty diamonds to fund inhumane and difficult power-associated activities. EITI of course depends entirely, as the Minister says, on having state institutions with which to deal. There are none here; this is a complete collapse of anything that we would see as a fundamental state. Most importantly, as we see in so many parts of eastern DRC, in the Kivus, these altering allegiances and associations with fighting groups require funding to get arms. One of the issues that have not surfaced at the moment—I put it out for what it is worth—is that in the Sahel and Mali we had to deal with the phenomenon that was already there, but an

11 emboldening took place because of the very ready access to cheap armaments, and plenty of them, not least coming out of south Libya. Here there appear to be plenty of arms, but not necessarily being sold from south Libya. One does have to have some form of money or kind to pay for those, and that is what these diamonds tend to support.

Q29 Fiona O'Donnell: Stephen, I will direct my first question to you, given that the FCO and the Foreign Secretary have led on the preventing sexual violence initiative. With the Human Rights Council reporting that there were gender-based and sexual violence crimes committed by Séléka forces, why has CAR not been a priority for that initiative? Mr O'Brien: You are absolutely right that wherever such sexual and gender-based violence takes place we should all have a deep anxiety, do our very best to understand what has been going on and call to account those who have been perpetrating it, under all the various mechanisms that are available. As for the evidence that has been emerging of late from the UK’s point of view, as I say, I do not speak for the Government; I am supported by the Foreign Office in my Sahel Prime Minister’s Envoy job. However, the information I have been able to gather is of the very deep commitment, on behalf of the coalition Government, against all violence against women, wherever it arises, particularly in conflicts in fragile areas and countries of need—here we are talking about CAR. That commitment is led both by the Foreign Secretary and by the Minister. It has been really important to have the information. CAR is a place where the United Kingdom in particular has not much knowledge and very few equities. As I understand it, we do not even have a consular position. I do not know the numbers, but I am told that maybe as few as 20 people have British passports in CAR, and they are all the types of people and professions who would know exactly what they are taking on. They are not engaged in the extractive industries, but are more game or thrill hunters, or missionaries. The answer to your question, really, is that nobody would second-guess the need to go after people who have done this. It arises whenever you have conflict in areas of deep poverty, where you get oppression and a complete disrespect, particularly of the rights of women and young people. You have a growing instance of child soldiers taking place in this area, which is equally reprehensible. It is a phenomenon we are all familiar with, sad and awful as it is, but without information and without the capacity to apprehend and to have a proper investigation, with proper due diligence and a process that is justiciable, it makes it very difficult. We must be extremely alert to it and shout it from the rooftops.

Q30 Fiona O'Donnell: Part of the problem is that we have no FCO presence on the ground and no DFID presence on the ground, so how are we going to collect information, and how are we going to support the victims? It is important to mention that it is often men who are involved as well as women and children. Are there any resources planned for deployment in the area? Lynne Featherstone: We are supporting, through Merlin, services to survivors of violence against women and girls. We are supporting staff in health facilities, where we are training them in the clinical management of rape, and we are providing them with the necessary supplies to enable comprehensive care. In terms of getting actual data, this is not the easiest environment in which to do this, but we are encouraging BINUCA to expand its human rights monitoring capacity and to establish a database to document the high-profile Séléka perpetrators, so that at least we will have some record when there is the possibility of action against them.

Q31 Fiona O'Donnell: Are there any resources to support children in particular, some of whom will have been victims or will have witnessed their mothers being raped?

There are reports of that. Are there any plans to send out some people with expertise in supporting children in these situations? Lynne Featherstone: Only through the agencies through which we are working and what they do. We do not have any specialist things for children. Obviously the agencies on the ground are well aware. The Secretary of State has just had the call to action, which is about women and girls in emergency situations. You are right; this is absolutely a classic case where all the constituent parts of what we need to work towards addressing these situations, both PSVI and the more generalised kind of danger that women are in, are in play. We are trying to look to how we can move these issues forward, but access is very difficult. We are not on the ground there ourselves, so we can only work through the agencies. We are putting in resources with particular regard to what is happening to women and girls, but not specifically targeted to children. They will be addressed through our general funding to ICRC, UN, etc.

Q32 Fiona O'Donnell: As you say, access is a huge problem. Save the Children, in their briefing, say that in some areas access to health services is now non-existent. The problem is not just that; it is also the stigma for many women in coming forward and seeking help. What more do you think can be done to ensure that the appropriate medical support is available to women and children? Lynne Featherstone: We are closely assessing the situation and working with other agencies to provide the most effective assistance that we can on the ground. We are guided by them. Access, as you have mentioned, is really an issue. We are encouraging the UN agencies and BINUCA to continue to get outside of Bangui. If we do not have a presence in the outlying areas, we cannot do anything, whether on health care, security or protection. There is literally no one there to do anything, and people are totally at the mercy of what is going on. We need appropriate security support in these locations. That is why the UN mandate on Thursday is so important, because without a security force going in, the aid agencies cannot get in to even begin looking at the health systems. We stand ready and, as I said, we have a staged approach. If agencies do get in there and they say they need more of X, Y or Z, then we will obviously look at supplying and helping with X, Y and Z, but we are stymied at the moment because there is no access.

Q33 Fiona O'Donnell: Will the cross-departmental Stabilisation Unit be undertaking any work in CAR? Lynne Featherstone: I am afraid I do not know the answer to that. Andrew McCoubrey: There are no plans at this stage, although they are looking at undertaking some analysis for us.

Q34 Chair: Just one question: you mentioned the food situation, and the reports we have seen say that people are having real difficulty in getting things to eat. You, Lynne, have said that access is a problem. That becomes critical very fast. What is our assessment of how dire the food situation is? Presumably, with all this disruption and displacement, any planting or harvesting will tend to be abandoned, so you will have a longer-term problem. Lynne Featherstone: Indeed. Part of the original £5 million that we sent in immediately was about helping 50,000 of the most vulnerable people with emergency nutrition. We monitor it. It is an ongoing situation; as requests come in, we look at them. We are not able to do more than that. At the moment, the Secretary of State has stepped up the funding so that agencies on the ground are about to scale up their work. If they want to scale up nutrition, then we will respond. The money is there to do what they think best with, at this point in time.

Mr O'Brien: The most important thing, of course, is that some of the money is going to the UNHAS, which enables the flights to get to areas that are going to be able to deliver emergency nutrition. I can see that that is a very useful link. As Jan Eliasson, the Deputy Secretary-General, said in his statement in relation to other things, the thing that is really of concern, though it is very difficult to see how else it is going to turn out, is the lead times in all this. Given what is going on on the ground, they are the biggest barrier to getting effective action. That is really tough. Lynne Featherstone: £680,000 has gone to Mercy Corps to deal with food and water, which they are flying out to places. That is the request to date.

Q35 Chair: Thank you very much. We recognise that the UK is not the lead player and has not been in this area. I do not think we would expect DFID, or indeed the Foreign Office, to do more than you have said. Other than the situation deteriorating, it has knock-on effects, which you have responded to. I am sure the Secretary of State will keep Parliament informed as to what is happening and what the UK engagement is. The Committee will make its own judgment, but it seems to me that we are making the right kind of responses that are proportionate and consistent and working with the people on the ground, given that we do not have people on the ground. Lynne Featherstone: We are being guided by the people on the ground and international agencies. At the same time, we are also trying to be constructive about the political solution that ultimately is going to be necessary. As I think one of you said, there will also be the strengthening of institutions, because it is an impossible environment in which to make anything work.

Q36 Chair: When Ministers, whether you or the Secretary of State, are answering this, it is always worthwhile identifying the contributions we make to the international agencies. Very often we focus on what the UK is doing bilaterally, but we support the UN, we support the EU. It is important that taxpayers understand that there are more routes than one. Lynne Featherstone: There are ICRC, the Humanitarian Air Service, Solidarity, Merlin. Good point. Mr O'Brien: In addition to the Minister confirming that, a really important point is that, at the humanitarian level, it is a question of what you can do, in the most practical way, on the best information. That clearly is what is taking place. We are playing our full part in a proportionate way, it seems to me. Ultimately, as with all these issues, this will depend upon there being a suitable political context and process by which order can be restored and, thereafter, some form of rule of law and, thereafter, an ability to get back to a stable, constitutional, engaged country, which has a recognition of what it is like to be a citizen of CAR rather than one of the many factions that are currently leading it down the most terrible fragmentation road. It starts with the UN and it has the EU and it has the African Union, and to a degree, although it is very low in capacity, ECCAS, which is the local regional grouping. Those are the institutions that need to be working to be effective in helping give confidence, access and a sense of a future to the people who are so direly affected in CAR. Most of their citizens are wrapped up in some form of engagement with one group or another. It is causing a very serious effect on the humanitarian side, as the Minister has outlined. Chair: Thank you very much indeed. I think it has been a helpful update. I appreciate what you are doing. Thank you.