The House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations met on Wednesday to discuss challenges in the Republic of Cameroon. Over the past year, the relationship between Cameroon’s government and the country’s minority Anglophone community has become increasingly violent, accelerating into armed conflict.

Hans De Marie Heungoup, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, called conflict in the Anglophone regions “the biggest security threat to Cameroon stability, which if left unaddressed could turn into civil war as has occurred in other African countries,” in a statement issued to the subcommittee.

The roots of the current conflict go back to Cameroon’s achieving independence almost 60 years ago.

Prior to independence, France and the United Kingdom colonized the territory. French Cameroon became independent in 1960, and one year later part of British-controlled Cameroon joined in a referendum overseen by the United Nations.

Since that referendum, the Anglophone community in Cameroon has felt increasingly marginalized. Initially, political power between the Anglophone and Francophone regions of Cameroon was balanced in a federal system. In the years following independence and unification, however, Cameroon moved toward a unitary, rather than a federal model, thereby limiting political autonomy for the minority Anglophone community.

The political system also provides for a strong executive. In 2008 constitutional amendments abolished term limits and granted the president immunity from prosecution after leaving office, resulting in protests. President Paul Biya, who has been in office since 1982, has concentrated power in the French-speaking part of Cameroon. His political party, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, controls most of the seats in the National Assembly and the Senate.

The English-speaking community also feels marginalized economically. The government tends to invest more in projects in French-speaking regions, as opposed to Anglophone areas. For example, the 2017 public investment budget allocated $225 million for projects in the Francophone South region, while the Anglophone North West and South West regions were given just over $150 million combined.

The current crisis began in late 2016, when lawyers and teachers in the Anglophone regions protested the appointment of French-speaking judges and teachers who lacked familiarity with British customs in the Anglophone parts of Cameroon. Negotiations with the government collapsed, spurring a crackdown that included cutting internet access in English-speaking regions and prosecuting leading activists.

Protests reignited in late 2017, and on Oct. 1, the anniversary of the reunification of Francophone and part of Anglophone Cameroon, secessionists proclaimed an independent state called Ambazonia.

The International Crisis Group reported that “defence and security forces responded with disproportionate force, leading to at least 40 deaths and over 100 injured protesters between 28 September and 2 October.” Cameroon security forces also “arrested hundreds of people without warrant, including in their homes” and “made use of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment.”

The report adds that the violence of September and October 2017 “opened up a rift between the government and the population, exacerbating the climate of mistrust and making the idea of secession more attractive.”

Christopher Fomunyoh, a senior associate and regional director for Central and West Africa programs at the National Democratic Institute, told the Free Beacon that support for secession has increased over the past two years “in large part because of the manner in which this crisis has been managed.”

In the past eight months, over one hundred secessionists and civilians have been killed by security forces, and hundreds of others have been arrested. Rebels have reportedly killed at least 80 soldiers in the past year and have tortured local officials and government supporters. The U.N. says more than 160,000 people have been displaced within Cameroon since 2016, and over 20,000 refugees had fled to Nigeria by the end of March.

Earlier this month, BBC News released video depicting violations of human rights, primarily by security forces. A clip from April shows soldiers setting fire to a house in Azi, a village in the Anglophone South West region. The soldiers’ uniforms were consistent with those worn by Cameroon’s elite Rapid Intervention Battalion, although a government official claimed that separatists are able to obtain military uniforms and commit violent acts in order to blame the government.

Fomunyoh thinks that if a transparent referendum or consultative process took place in Anglophone Cameroon, then “the vast majority of Anglophones today would say that based on the grievances of the past plus the manner in which this government has managed this crisis in the past two years, there is no reason for them to be part of the Republic of Cameroon.”

If the government continues to insist on a violent crackdown and refuses dialogue, Fomunyoh warns, “the potential for this crisis to worsen is extremely high” because of “long pent-up frustrations and grievances that are legitimate and need to be properly addressed.”

Source: The Washington Beacon

Following the crisis that has rocked Southern Cameroons and the solid resistance from Ambazonian Restoration Forces, the Biya government has reportedly stepped up its excessive use of military might to crush the self defense actions by the English speaking communities. Yaoundé has consistently rejected calls for genuine dialogue and the 85 year old Biya has ordered another massive deployment of French Cameroun soldiers to Southern Cameroons.

This weekend has seen nearly all the villages along the stretch of road linking Fundong and Bamenda deserted. Cameroon Concord News correspondent in the Bamenda County noted that Southern Cameroonians in the Northern Zone have escaped into the bushes anticipating a military onslaught being planned by government forces in retaliation for the killing of a police officer earlier this week. The said police officer was allegedly arrested by an unknown group of Ambazonian Resistance Forces three weeks ago.  His badly mutilated body was found along the Fundong -Njinikom road a day after Cameroon government troops shot and killed a family man whose name we got as Titus at his home in Boyui.

A native of the area told this reporter that the late Titus was gun down in front of his wife and children. We understand that military action is already going on at Baingo, with soldiers forcing passengers out of cars, and asking them to undress themselves and roll over in mud, humiliating them in an unthinkable pattern. Our informant in Baingo has also confirmed the killing of a lady late yesterday.

Elsewhere in Fundong, a CPDM Councilor and business tycoon,   Njvua Ignatius was killed by members of the Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces. The pro Biya comedian was an outspoken and diehard supporter of the Yaoundé regime and noted for defying orders given by the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

A prominent acolyte of the Yaoundé regime was heard murmuring privately in Bamenda that the collapse of the central authority in Southern Cameroons is an indication that President Biya is no longer the man in charge.  Last week, footage of a video emerged on social media showing Francophone army soldiers firing from a machine gun into homes without any visible threat to their security.

From the nation’s capital in Yaoundé, the political situation appear to be going well for the Biya Francophone regime that has deployed approximately 35,000 army soldiers in Southern Cameroons and has destroyed more than 72 Southern Cameroons towns and villages.

But the view deep inside the Federal Republic of Ambazonia tells a different story as some officials and Southern Cameroons opinion leaders recently told Senator Peter Mafany Musonge. The complete absence of a genuine political process to accompany the military onslaught going on in Southern Cameroons is instead driving all Ambazonian communities including Anglophone CPDM militants to consider allying with the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

By Staffman Ntam Charles Ngeh in Bonn

Germany

The dilapidated delivery room at a small health centre in northern Cameroon is without power and adjoins an abandoned toilet.

The beds, meant to receive young mothers, are stained and unusable.

“We lack everything: staff, drugs, beds,” explains Paul Korke, the supervisor at the centre in this ramshackle border village.

The clinic has just two state-sponsored medics to care for the 30 to 50 women and children who use the centre each day, some residents and other refugees who have fled violence in the neighbouring Central African Republic.

Poverty and underdevelopment in this poor corner of Cameroon affects refugees and residents alike.

For this reason, the World Bank, supported by UNHCR, is providing targeted support for these underdeveloped regions hosting refugees to improve basic social services and infrastructure, and by extending social safety nets to the most vulnerable refugees and local residents.

The bank’s International Development Association (IDA) last month approved US$274 million in targeted funding to help the most vulnerable have access to health care, education and “social safety nets”.

The package includes a $130 million grant. The country is the first to benefit from $2 billion in dedicated funding provided by the IDA to support low-income countries hosting large numbers of refugees.

“The only thing I can do is to write a new page every day on the blackboard.”

“These resources are critical to supporting the government in bringing adequate services to refugees and their host communities,” said Elisabeth Huybens, World Bank country director for Cameroon.

“Most refugees live side-by-side with Cameroonians in the regions that are already the poorest and most fragile of Cameroon, including the area subject to Boko Haram attacks.”

The funding will go to four projects, with the first disbursements due by the end of the year.  It will go towards improving health centres, providing new equipment, and funding and training for staff, as well as money for schools to improve the quality and quantity of teachers, among other things, desperately needed in mixed communities such as Mbiti in the Kette municipality in which refugees represent half of the overall population.

A few steps from the border village’s strained medical centre is the overcrowded primary school. There are 872 pupils, mostly refugee children, studying a total of four classes.

One of the teachers, Florian, leads a mixed class of 172 pupils, with few teaching materials: “We have no books for the kids,” he says. “So, the only thing I can do is to write a new page every day on the blackboard.”

Development funds are particularly needed in the Central African country, which has played a key role in welcoming refugees from various crises and conflicts in the volatile region in recent years which have slipped from the headlines.

Paradoxically, at the height of the Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria and the CAR displacement, the arrival of humanitarian workers in Cameroon offered these poor regions, including communities like Mbiti, a second wind. As they have dropped from public attention, donors gradually pulled out and funding to assist refugees grew scarce.

“The needs are enormous, especially in terms of education and health.”

In 2017, UNHCR received only seven per cent of the money needed to assist the most vulnerable, a shortfall that has affected essential programmes such as the clinic and primary school in Mbiti.

“Before, we received 40,000 CFA francs per month (60 euros). But since 2018, this has reduced to 35,000 (53 euros) and we just learnt that it will be further cut to 22,000 CFA francs (33 euros)”, says Florian, highlighting their dwindling resources.

The needs of the mixed communities of refugees and residents persist, but there is no hope that the humanitarian funds will return to the regions in greatest need, says Kouassi Etien, UNHCR’s representative in Cameroon.

“It is unlikely that we will succeed in obtaining the kind of funding we had at the height of the emergency. Yet these populations, refugees and Cameroonians alike, need support,” Etien says, stressing the important role of projects like that announced by the World Bank. “Emergency must make way for development for all.”

The programme has yet to disburse funds to the areas most in need in the north and east of the country. At the local level, authorities have high expectations, among them Michel Nada, the mayor of Ngoura, a village a few miles from the border with CAR, which has received large numbers of refugees in the past four years.

“Many of them have settled in camps, but the majority has been welcomed into local communities” he says. “Today, the needs are enormous, especially in terms of education and health.”

“We are expecting a lot of this dedicated support which should help improve the living conditions of all our fellow citizens, refugees and Cameroonians.”

Source: The UN Refugee Agency