UN increases efforts to assist children in Central African Republic

Amid continued fighting in the Central African Republic (CAR), the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners are setting up temporary classrooms for more than 20,000 children in the capital, Bangui, and in the northwest of the country, with more on the way.“Many schools had been destroyed, and in times of conflict children really needed some form of normality in their lives,” spokesman Patrick McCormick told reporters in Geneva Tuesday.Being back in class gave children a “sense of a return to normalcy, stability, and hope for the future,” McCormick said, while the U.N. agency works with the government to get permanent schools functioning again. UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, who spent four days in the CAR in January, has said that children in the CAR are in desperate need of protection and support.