Global Issues

Central African Republic

• Source and destination country for children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking.

• Abducted Sudanese and Central African citizens experienced conditions of forced labor and sexual servitude at the hands of the Lord’s Liberation Army (LRA) after being forcibly taken to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

• LRA abduct and exploit enslaved Sudanese, Congolese, Central African, and Ugandan children for use as concubines.

• Children from the Central African Republic may be trafficked to Cameroon.

• Societal abuses included female genital mutilation, discrimination against women and Pygmies; trafficking in persons; forced labor; and child labor, including forced child labor.

• Authorities continued to arrest individuals, particularly women, and charge them with witchcraft, punishable by execution. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called the practice “a gender-based calumny that has no place in any society in the 21st century.”

 

Advocacy:

• Government signed, with UNICEF, a 2011 Action Plan for the protection of children

Source: U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report, U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011