The interagency response to the emergency in the Central African Republic (CAR) during 2013-2014 made large scale progress toward providing basic services, reinforcing protection and delivering assistance to around two million people in need. It made a strong contribution to the protection of civilians, and contributed enormously to relieving the crisis, saving many thousands of lives and preventing famine, disease outbreaks, mass atrocities, and larger refugee outflows. Moreover its successes were achieved in a highly constrained environment: a collapsed state, unprepared agencies, minimal infrastructure, widespread insecurity, and international neglect (see Conclusions p58).
The humanitarian response contributed to preventing higher mortality, while the wider humanitarian, military and political response greatly relieved the crisis. All stakeholder groups agree that the response saved lives through provision of food assistance, health, WASH, and protection services. UN actors, including national and international partners believe that hundreds of thousands of the 922,000 IDPs in January 2014 and 400,000 IDPs in December 2014 would not have survived without food assistance and basic health services. In addition, they all agreed that the humanitarian response helped to calm the situation, stop a negative spiral, avert a disaster, and ‘hold the country together.’ National leaders believed ‘genocide’ was averted and relative calm returned (see Conclusions p58).
All the same the response fell short of highest humanitarian aspirations. The scale of targeting and funding remained insufficient compared to needs, the specific needs of vulnerable groups were not addressed, sector results remained modest, results were poor in livelihoods and recovery, IDPs in the bush and in host families were left unassisted, and opportunities were missed to build capacity for national response (except for health sector), prepare for transition, and develop solutions to the displacement crisis (see Conclusions p58).