The United Nations has reported about the death of 29 children that are fleeing the war-ravaged Central African Republic from starvation, exhaustion and exposure. They died after crossing into Cameroon within a month.

Many refugees fleeing bloody sectarian clashes in Central African Republic have been forced to hide in the bush without food or clean water for weeks on end, and are arriving in Cameroon in “extremely poor shape.”

Spokesman for the United Nations’ refugee agency, Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva: “in the last month, the rate of deaths among refugee children has been particularly high,”

He said that between April 14 and May 18, 29 children, the youngest a baby, and the eldest, nine years old, had died after crossing into Cameroon.
Most of the children who had died arrived malnourished and gravely ill, Edwards said, adding that efforts to save them at therapeutic feeding centres had failed.

“Dehydration, hypothermia and severe anaemia were the main causes of death,” he said.
The UN’s World Food Programme said more than a quarter of the children arriving in Cameroon from Central Africa were suffering from acute malnutrition.

“That is well above the 15-percent emergency threshold,” WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs pointed out, describing the situation as “dramatic”.
Some 85,000 refugees have arrived in Cameroon from Central Africa since December — 80 percent of them women and children — and are spread out across 300 villages, according to UNHCR.

Deeply impoverished Central Africa has been gripped by crisis since mainly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in a March 2013 coup, but then were replaced with an interim government in January.

Splinter groups of Seleka rebels, however, embarked on a campaign of killing, raping and looting, prompting members of the Christian majority to form vigilante “anti-balaka” groups.

The two groups have unleashed a wave of tit-for-tat killings that has left thousands dead and close to a million displaced — most of them Muslims.

Edwards pointed out today that anti-Balaka militiamen had been attacking refugees along the way to Cameroon and had blocked the main roads leading to that country.

As a result, the number of refugees flooding into Cameroon had dropped to around 2,000 a week from around 10,000 during the final week of March, he said.

“The journey that people are making from CAR is a journey of intimidation, starvations and death,” he said, stressing that many of those arriving in Cameroon and other countries were not only severely malnourished but also severely wounded.

“Newly arriving refugees tell us that many of their family members remain trapped in the bush in CAR,” he said.
UN agencies and other aid organisations were working to meet the towering needs of the refugees in Cameroon, but funding is sorely lacking.

Of the $22.6 million the UNHCR has said it needs for its operation there this year, it has so far received just $4.2 million Edwards said.

The situation for WFP was even worse, lamented Byrs, pointing out that the UN agency had requested $15.6 million but had so far received no funds.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has given a graphic picture of how al Qaeda elements in Afghanistan and Pakistan have found their way into Nigeria to join members of Boko Haram that have launched lethal attacks in many parts of the North.

“Now you find these groups are spread across an arc that runs roughly from Pakistan across the Arabian Peninsula, across the Middle East and North Africa and all the way down into Nigeria with Boko Haram,” Dempsey said.

General Depmsey who spoke shortly after meeting with NATO military leaders in Brussels said that while the US and NATO have been successful in suppressing the al Qaeda elements in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the group has adapted and decentralized.

Depmsey warned that instability in the Middle East and North Africa had allowed the al Qaeda to take advantage of it with an “arc” running across the region starting from Pakistan.

“But we also have to realise something has changed close to home – the eastern flank and southern flank – and that requires us to refocus on the threats that are real,” Dempsey said.

He said that the Taliban should take advantage of what may be a shrinking window of opportunity to seek a negotiated end to the conflict in Afghanistan.

“I don’t give military advice to the Taliban, but if I were giving them advice, I’d say, ‘Your negotiating position is not going to improve; it’s going to erode’,” he said.

Dempsey spoke after meeting NATO military leaders in Brussels as the alliance plans for what is expected to be a continued Western training mission in Afghanistan after most NATO and allied forces depart late this year.

If a continued troop presence and financial backing for Afghan forces can be secured, “it would seem to me that the Taliban would realise that their opportunity to reconcile or reintegrate is a wasting opportunity,” Dempsey said in an interview with Reuters and the Pentagon’s official news agency. “If they don’t take advantage of it now, they will be in a weaker position later.”

The Taliban is intensifying its annual summer insurgent campaign as Afghanistan prepares for second-round voting in a presidential election that will pick the country’s first new leader in more than a dozen years.

Afghanistan’s next president will face daunting challenges. Its security forces still lack in key areas such as intelligence and air power, and foreign assistance that has sustained the impoverished country is diminishing.

Many Taliban leaders have been captured and killed, and the group has been pushed out of much of its southern heartland. But it remains potent in remote areas along the Afghan border with Pakistan and is still able to plan attacks from Pakistan’s northwest tribal region.

US and NATO officials have pointed to a relatively peaceful first round of elections this spring, and other recent events for which Afghan forces provided security, as proof that Afghanistan is getting close to being ready to stand on its own after Western combat forces depart in December.

Turnout was higher than expected in that vote despite Taliban warnings that Afghans should not take part.

“They haven’t been able to convince the people of Afghanistan that their future should be with the Taliban and not with an elected government,” Dempsey said.

“One might argue that I’m maybe trying to be a little overly optimistic about it because we’ve invested 12 years of our lives in it, but it does seem to me to be a clear statement on the part of the Afghan people,” he said.

It remains to be seen what the departure of President Hamid Karzai will mean for on-again, off-again Western efforts to broker a peace deal between the Taliban and Afghan authorities.

The Obama administration has at several points appeared close to launching confidence-building measures that would enable peace talks, only to see the initiatives founder. The Taliban’s leadership has consistently rejected direct talks with Karzai’s government.