UN Refugee Chief Vows Support For C.A.R Refugees

The U.N.’s refugee chief, Filippo Grandi, on a visit to Cameroon this week, vowed to give more support to displaced Central Africans and Cameroonians fleeing intercommunal violence.

Grandi spoke at a ministerial conference in Yaoundé on helping refugees from the Central African Republic and during a visit to northern Cameroon.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has said the U.N.’s refugee agency (the UNHCR) would step up support for nearly 1.4 million displaced Central Africans.

Grandi was speaking at a conference in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, with ministers from Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan.

They are all countries with displaced people and refugees from the Central African Republic that have fled ongoing fighting back home since 2013.

The ministers pledged to continue to support ongoing reconciliation efforts in the CAR for peace to return to the troubled state so that IDPs and refugees can go home.

Grandi praised Cameroon, which hosts about half of the the CAR’s refugees.

He says Cameroon is home to about half-a-million refugees from the Central African Republic, Nigeria, and other nationals who find hospitable reception and peace in the central African state.

Grandi says he met with Cameroonian authorities and UNHCR partners to find ways of increasing and coordinating international aid to improve conditions for people displaced from their homes by crises.

The UNHCR says about 600,000 people are internally displaced in the Central African Republic, while another 700,000 have fled to neighboring countries.