18 February 2020

A global network of organisations working to provide shared communications services for humanitarian emergencies needs US$1.3m to operate effectively in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2020.

The Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) requires the funds mainly for the purchasing of relevant equipment, which will support the Telecommunications Security Standards (TESS) recommendations to enable emergency responders to communicate in deep field areas in the conflict prone CAR.

One planned exercise is the radio programming training for United Nations (UN) and non-governmental organisations (NGO) staff in the city of Paoua and to deploy radio and satellite equipment, as recommended by TESS.

Partnerships have been secured with two local partner organisations to host the designated phone booth for affected communities in the central Bria and managing the Information and Learning Hub for affected communities in the city of Bangassou.

At the UN Mission in CAR (MINUSCA)-hosted site, it set up a Security Operations Centre (SOC) and deployed a dedicated NGO very high frequency (VHF) channel, monitored by a dedicated VHF base station.

All required reprogramming of equipment for UN agencies and NGOs and maintenance of current communications infrastructure was also carried out.