The Central African Republic, which the United Nations High Commissioner has described as undergoing "the most neglected crisis in the world", has an extremely poor human rights record. It has been designated 'Not Free' by Freedom House from 1972 to 1990, in 2002 and 2003, and from 2014 to the present day. It was rated 'Partly Free' from 1991 to 2001 and from 2004 to 2013. On the United Nations Human Development Index, it ranks 179 out of 187 countries. Between 1988 and 2008, life expectancy decreased from 49 years to 47.7 years.
According to the U.S. State Department, major human rights abuses occur in the country. These include extrajudicial executions by security forces; the torture, beating and rape of suspects and prisoners; impunity, particularly among the armed forces; harsh and life-threatening conditions in prisons and detention centers; arbitrary arrest and detention, prolonged pretrial detention and denial of fair trials; occasional intimidation and restrictions on the press; restrictions on freedom of movement; official corruption; and restrictions on workers' rights.
The State Department report also cites widespread, and often fatal, mob violence; the prevalence of female genital mutilation; discrimination against women and Pygmies; trafficking in persons; forced labor; and child labor. Freedom of movement is limited in the northern part of the country "because of actions by state security forces, armed bandits, and other nonstate armed entities" and thanks to fighting between government and anti-government forces, many persons have been internally displaced.
Recent reports on human rights abuses
In recent years, perhaps the major impediment to human rights in the Central African Republic has been the persistence of widespread armed struggle in the country between government forces and rebel groups and in some cases, between warring rebel groups. In October 2008, a report by the human-rights section of the UN Peacebuilding Support Office in the country, known as BONUCA, described "a serious worsening of the security situation in the north of the country where Government forces, rebels and highway bandits have been active, all of whom committed atrocities" and stated that "[e]xtrajudicial killings, torture and arbitrary arrests, mostly attributed to the defence and security forces and encouraged by a culture of impunity, have contributed to a considerable deterioration in human rights".
The BONUCA report further noted that government forces "blithely violate the laws of war. In their operations against rebels or bandits they make no distinction between those who have taken up arms and civilians… In reprisal raids, the military burn houses, execute people rightly or wrongly accused of complicity with rebels or bandits". According to BONUCA, soldiers in the town of Bouar displayed "severed heads that they claimed belonged to highway bandits they had shot", that bandits "torture travellers, plunder local residents, and kidnap women and children for ransom", that the rebel group called Armée populaire pour la restauration de la democratie (APRD) "prevents some residents from moving around" and that armed men probably belonging to the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) had "kidnapped 150 people, including 55 children and physically abused them". On the other hand, BONUCA said that the government had been very cooperative with human-rights groups.
In February 2010, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said that impunity for human-rights abuses is one of the Central African Republic's major challenges. Citing "summary executions, enforced disappearances, illegal arrests, and detention", she called for "strenuous efforts... ...to put an end to these extremely serious abuses of power".