UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow spoke at the United Nations on July 22 about her latest visit to Central African Republic and how ethnic cleansing is happening in numbers so staggering the United Nations and the global community need to pay attention.
“What we did see though, and there’s no doubt about this, was ethnic cleansing,” she began her telling the press. “By the time I came back in June, early July…the entire town of Bossangoa, virtually all Muslims, had been ‘cleansed’ of the entire Muslim population,” she added.
Bossangoa, the capital of Ouham, one of the 14 prefectures of the Central African Republic (CAR), has been the stage for conflict since 2012. When the rebels of a group named the Séléka Alliance overtook the town as part of the CAR 2012-2013 conflict. The rebels were seeking to overthrow the government of the President Frainçois Bozizé.
By January of this year most of its 50,000 population fled the city for a safer place. Farrow went on to say that she saw the difference in the areas where troops were active. However there was still a challenge because “there aren’t enough of them.”
The award-winning actress said that while she didn’t want to take the focus away from the Central African Republic, she did thing that there could be a better United Nations.
“Can we be a better more effective United Nations? Yes.” She said to the members of the press. “If everyone passed through these portals left their ego behind and really were here to serve the most vulnerable people on Earth, we’ll see something better for all people; and don’t we wish that, you know, for all people?”
Farrow has been a long-time activist, wrote an Op-Ed on CNN where she says that “within the Central African Republic, every system has crumbled. Malnutrition and disease stalk children,” adding that “this is a country where impunity reigns. The complete absence of law and order has given Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army a haven. It could easily be viewed as an open invitation for other extremist groups to set up camps, including the likes of Nigeria’s Boko Haram.”
La Shawn Pagán/Europa Newswire