Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2025, published 114th ILC session (2026)

Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) - Central African Republic (Ratification: 1960)

Articles 1(1) and 2(1) of the Convention. 1. Repeal of legal texts. Idleness, active population and imposition of compulsory activities. In its previous comments, the Committee asked the Government to take the necessary steps to formally repeal certain provisions of the national legislation, namely:

• Ordinance No. 66/004 of 8 January 1966 on the suppression of idleness, as amended, under which any able-bodied person who cannot prove that he or she is engaged in a normal activity providing for his or her subsistence or engaged in studies shall be considered to be idle and shall be liable to imprisonment of one to three years;
• Ordinance No. 66/038 of June 1966 on the supervision of the active population, under which any person who cannot prove that he or she belongs to one of the eight categories of the active population shall be called up to cultivate land designated by the administrative authorities and shall also be considered a vagabond if apprehended outside his or her sub-prefecture of origin and shall be liable to imprisonment;
• Ordinance No. 75/005 of 5 January 1975 obliging all citizens to provide proof of the exercise of a commercial, agricultural or pastoral activity and rendering any person in breach of this provision liable to the most severe penalties;
• section 28 of Act No. 60/109 of 27 June 1960 on the development of the rural economy, under which minimum areas for cultivation are to be established for each rural community.

The Government once again indicates that these texts have fallen into disuse and are no longer applied. It undertakes to take steps to formally repeal these texts in order to avoid any ambiguity. The Committee trusts that the Government will take the necessary steps without delay to repeal the above-mentioned provisions so as to eliminate any possibility of direct or indirect compulsion to work and thus ensure conformity with the Convention. The Committee requests the Government to provide information on progress made in this regard.

2. Requisitioning of labour and work in the public interest. The Committee recalls that section 8 of the Labour Code of 2009 (Act No. 09.004) includes among the exceptions to forced labour “any work or service performed pursuant to a requisitioning order” and also “any work or service in the public interest performed with the consent of the persons concerned”.

In this regard, the Government indicates that the requisitioning of labour and work in the public interest are not imposed on citizens, and that work in the general interest is usually done voluntarily. It refers to weekly public sanitation activities called “Kwa Ti Kodrö”, in which some citizens from districts of Bangui and a number of other cities participate voluntarily. The Government points out in this regard that the activities are devoted to community work such as weeding, sludge removal, and cleaning of markets and schools. The Committee requests the Government to provide any available information on any regulatory text which governs requisitioning.

3. Freedom of military personnel to leave their employment. In response to the Committee’s request to provide information on the criteria used by the disciplinary council for accepting or rejecting an application for resignation from armed forces personnel during peacetime, the Government indicates that general disciplinary regulations applicable to the security and defence forces establish the conditions for resignation on personal grounds, and also the conditions relating to other situations such as dismissal or prosecution in the event of an offence being committed. The Government points out that the disciplinary council rules on these cases but that resignation applications are rare. The Committee once again requests the Government to indicate the criteria used by the disciplinary council for accepting or rejecting an application for resignation from armed forces personnel, and to indicate the number of resignation applications that have been made, the number refused, and the grounds for these refusals. The Committee also requests the Government to provide copies of the general disciplinary regulations applicable to armed forces personnel.

4. Work imposed on indigenous populations.Referring to its comments on the application of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169), and the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111), the Committee requests the Government to indicate the steps taken to raise the awareness of indigenous populations and to protect them against the imposition of any practice amounting to forced labour, and also the steps taken to enable them to assert their rights in such situations.