SUMMARY
UPC (Union pour la paix en Centrafrique, Union for Peace in the Central African Republic) was a predominantly Fulani rebel group active in the Central African Republic (CAR). It was founded in 2014 by Ali Darassa Mahamat, a Fulani of Mbororo background from the herding communities of the Chad-CAR borderlands with earlier ties to Chadian rebel movements. The group emerged from the former Séléka, splitting from the FPRC after Darassa rejected its leader's plan for a separate Muslim-dominated north. Many of the fighters who joined the UPC were ethnic Fulani who had previously belonged to the FPR (Front populaire pour le redressement, Popular Front for Recovery), the Chadian rebel movement in which Darassa had been a senior commander. Presenting itself as a protector of Muslim Fulani herders, the UPC was led throughout its existence by Darassa, its founder and commander.
Darassa had been a Séléka commander in Bambari, and the UPC controlled the town until it was pushed out under pressure from MINUSCA in early 2017, after which it moved its base successively to Alindao, Bokolobo, and Boyo. The group held sway over resource-rich prefectures in the centre and east, including Ouaka, Basse-Kotto, and Haute-Kotto, financing itself by taxing cattle herding, mining, and transit routes. It clashed repeatedly with anti-Balaka militias and with its rival ex-Séléka faction, the FPRC, in particular over control of Bambari and the surrounding area.
UPC was one of the country's deadliest perpetrators of violence against civilians, frequently targeting those it perceived as supporters of its enemies, often Christians, and deepening tensions between Muslim and Christian communities. Its fighters were implicated in a series of massacres. In UCDP data, the UPC was active as a distinct actor from 2014 to 2021, during which it killed around 1,000 civilians in one-sided violence and fought the government, the anti-Balaka, and the FPRC. From 2021 its activities were recorded under the rebel coalitions it belonged to rather than under its own name.
UPC was a signatory to the Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation, known as the Khartoum Accord, signed on 6 February 2019, under which several armed group leaders received government posts. The commitment did not hold. In December 2020 the UPC joined the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC), a new alliance formed to disrupt that month's elections and overthrow President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, and it again attacked Bambari before being repelled by government forces and their Russian and Rwandan allies. Darassa became the coalition's chief of staff. The UPC briefly withdrew from the CPC in April 2021 before rejoining later that year, and in December 2021 Darassa was placed under UN sanctions for his leading role in the coalition.
In 2024, after Darassa announced his willingness to enter into dialogue with the government, he was expelled from the CPC, and in August he and Noureddine Adam of the FPRC formed a breakaway coalition, the Coalition of Patriots for Change-Fundamental (CPC-F), which the UPC joined. By then the group had been substantially weakened, having lost many of its fighters and much of its weaponry. It signed a Chad-mediated ceasefire in N'Djamena in April 2025 and was formally dissolved at a ceremony in Bangui on 10 July 2025, with its fighters entering a disarmament and demobilization process.
