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Central African Republic (CAR / République Centrafricaine)

Jurisdiction code: CF · Legal system: civil-law
Language(s): fr, sg

Central African Republic is a Central African civil-law unitary republic whose family-law framework operates under the Family Code 1997 (Code de la Famille, Law 97.013) drawing on French civil-law substantive heritage with codification of customary-law marriage provisions. Parental authority and child custody are governed by Family Code arts. 269-301. The Court of Cassation (Cour de Cassation) is the apex court for civil and criminal matters; the Constitutional Court (Cour Constitutionnelle) operates separate constitutional review. Family-law matters are heard at first instance in the Court of First Instance (Tribunal de Grande Instance). Psychology profession is regulated through the Ministry of Health framework. CAR is silent on 'parental alienation' as a statutory label; courts operate substantively under the interest-of-the-child standard. CAR is non-Hague Convention.

PA recognition status

  • Statutory: silent
  • Apex court position: no-apex-position
  • Professional regulator position: silent

Statutory framework

  • Family Code 1997 (Law 97.013) arts. 269-301 — Family Code — Parental authority and custody (1997) — https://www.cc-rca.cf/
  • Federal Family Code drawing on French civil-law substantive heritage with codification of customary-law marriage provisions. Arts. 269-301 govern parental authority and child custody.

Apex courts

Court of Cassation (Cour de Cassation)

https://www.cc-rca.cf/

Constitutional Court (Cour Constitutionnelle)

https://www.cc-rca.cf/

Professional regulators

Anonymisation convention

CAR family-court decisions are anonymised per Court of Cassation practice using initials.

Key developments

  • 1997 — Federal Family Code enacted drawing on French civil-law substantive heritage with codification of customary-law marriage provisions.

Structural findings

  • CAR operates a French-civil-law family-law framework with codification of customary-law marriage provisions — places CAR in the Central African Francophone civil-law cluster with French-derivative substantive heritage.
  • Bilingual official-language framework (French + Sango) reflects post-independence language-policy heritage.
  • Non-Hague Convention status places CAR in the non-Hague Central African cluster.

See also

  • jurisdiction:chad
  • jurisdiction:cameroon
  • jurisdiction:republic-of-the-congo
  • evidence:cross-border-parental-abduction-and-pa-intersection
  • evidence:childrens-rights-paramountcy-doctrine

Sources

  1. Constitutional Court of CAR — https://www.cc-rca.cf/ (Constitutional Court) [fr,sg]
  2. Ministry of Health — https://www.sante.cf/ (Ministry of Health) [fr,sg]

Editorial notes

  • Central African Republic jurisdiction sidecar — civil-law Central African Francophone (Family Code 1997 + customary-law-codified + non-Hague Convention).
  • PA-recognition: silent statutory + no-apex-position + silent regulator.
  • Joins Central African + Francophone + civil-law + French-derivative + customary-law-codified + non-Hague Convention clusters within the corpus.

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