In addition to the host, João Lourenço, acting president of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (CIRGL), the presidents of the Central African Republic (CAR), Faustin Touaderá, of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, of the Republic of Congo, will be at the meeting. Dennis Sassou Nguesso and the President of the Sovereign Transitional Council of the Republic of Sudan, Abdul Fatah al-Burhan.
High-level delegations representing Chad, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo will also participate.
The capital hosted on January 28th a first mini-summit on the political and security situation in CAR.
At the end of the meeting, João Lourenço urged "Central African politicians and civil society to overcome, with a patriotic sense, the real or forged differences that still prevail in that country" and called for dialogue and an end to the arms embargo imposed in 2013 by UN to the CAR, which runs until 31 July 2021.
A group of United Nations experts warned, in late March, of "serious human rights violations" perpetrated by Russian paramilitaries fighting alongside the armed forces of the Central African Republic.
The UN group expresses particular concern about the involvement of mercenaries in a series of violent attacks that have occurred since the presidential elections of 27 December 2020.
Among human rights violations, "there are reports of mass summary executions, arbitrary detentions, torture during interrogations, forced disappearances, forced displacement of the civilian population, indiscriminate segregation of civilian facilities, violations of the right to health, and increasing attacks on agents humanitarian ", they add.
Two weeks before the presidential and legislative elections in late December, six of the most powerful armed groups, which controlled two-thirds of the Central African Republic (CAR), a country that has been in civil war for eight years, have joined forces to overthrow the regime of the President Faustin Archange Touadéra.
CAR authorities have requested and received support from hundreds of Rwandan soldiers and Russian paramilitaries, who have come to the aid of a destitute local army.
The rebels were rebuffed, with the help of some 12,000 members of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (Minusca), who have been in the country since 2014.
UN experts also "expressed concerns about proximity and interoperability" between Russian paramilitaries and Minusca.
Russia has always refuted the presence of the paramilitary group Wagner in the Central African Republic and has described the Russian military deployed in the country as "instructors" responsible for training soldiers and sergeants in the country's army.
Faustin Archange Touadéra, who has chaired the CAR since 2016, was re-elected in the first round of elections on December 27 with 53.16% of the vote, and officially sworn in on Tuesday for a new presidential term in a ceremony held at the National Assembly, in the capital, Bangui.
The CAR fell into chaos and violence in 2013, after the overthrow of the then president, François Bozizé, by armed groups together in Séléka, which provoked the opposition of other militias, grouped in the anti-Balaka.
Since then, Central African territory has been the scene of community clashes between these groups, which have forced almost a quarter of the 4.7 million inhabitants of CAR to leave their homes.
Portugal currently has 241 military personnel on RCA, of which 183 are part of the UN mission, Minusca, and 58 participate in the European Union (EUTM) training mission, led by Brigadier-General Neves de Abreu, until September 2021.
