The UN Security Council convened on Tuesday to address the volatile security landscape in Central Africa, focusing on regional counter-terrorism efforts and the ongoing fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a militant group the UN estimates is responsible for more than 100,000 deaths across the region.
Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Africa, presented the Secretary-General's semi-annual report on the activities of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA). While Pobee acknowledged several positive political developments—including recent democratic elections and a revitalized commitment from the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS)—she warned that these institutional gains are being rapidly overshadowed by a matrix of destabilizing factors.
"These achievements have unfolded against a troubling backdrop," Pobee told the Council, citing a compounding multidimensional security crisis, worsening humanitarian conditions, deep economic pressures, and an alarming rollback of civil liberties.
According to the UN briefing, regional instability is currently concentrated around two primary geographic flashpoints: eastern Chad and the broader Lake Chad Basin.
The catastrophic conflict in neighboring Sudan, now entering its fourth year, continues to severely spill over borders. Since fighting erupted in April 2023, Chad has absorbed more than 900,000 Sudanese refugees alongside 300,000 returning Chadian nationals. Pobee emphasized that this massive influx has severely overextended national resources and deeply fractured social cohesion in Chad's eastern provinces.
Concurrently, border communities in Cameroon and Chad continue to suffer from violent incursions carried out by Boko Haram and its various splinter factions, including Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). Insurgents have systematically exploited the sparse presence of state authorities and porous borders to launch attacks against civilians.
While Pobee praised the Multinational Joint Task Force—a regional military coalition composed of troops from Benin, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Chad—as an essential tool against violent extremism, she emphasized that a purely militarized strategy cannot solve the crisis.
The UN official called on international partners and multilateral development banks to step up funding for the Lake Chad Basin Commission’s cross-border programs, which focus on long-term stabilization, structural recovery, and community resilience.
Pobee closed her address by sounding the alarm on a shrinking democratic space across multiple Central African nations. She noted a distinct and systemic tightening of political rights and civil liberties, warning Council members that a failure to reverse this trajectory would choke civic engagement, erode public trust in state institutions, and inevitably trigger new cycles of violent conflict.
