Last week, a group of about 50 asylum-seekers from Cameroon protested the immigration process in Tijuana. They say they have been waiting a month or more to request asylum and are running out of money.

The number of Cameroonians requesting asylum in the U.S. has increased in recent years according to data from UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. The data show a 56% increase in the number of people from Cameroon seeking asylum in the U.S. between 2014 and 2016 around the time atrocities fueled by political violence began in that country.

Last week, a group of about 50 asylum seekers from Cameroon protested the immigration process in Tijuana. They say they have been waiting a month or more to request asylum and are running out of money.

“The American government and the Mexican government should understand that we came a long way. From Africa, from Cameroon to this place, it took us about four or five months,” said Brown, one of the asylum seekers who only gave KPBS his first name. “We have spent a lot of money. Being here we don’t have money to eat, we have to pay our hotel bills. We are stranded. So we are pleading on both governments to see how they can help us.”

KPBS can’t confirm the exact number of people from Cameroon waiting in Tijuana to request asylum in the U.S. But there are many stories such as Brown’s. Most, like him, are members of the English-speaking minority which has been facing intense government oppression since 2016.

Andrea Barron, advocacy & outreach program manager with Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, joined Midday Edition Thursday to talk about the conditions driving people from Cameroon to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Source: KPBS

The United States has particularly important stakes in Cameroon. With investment comes the responsibility and leverage to ease the extent of human suffering.

The central African nation of Cameroon does not often make international headlines. Governments within Africa and beyond have recognized Cameroon’s military efforts against Boko Haram, and the country has also been known for welcoming refugees from neighboring countries and for the peaceful coexistence among its hundreds of linguistic groups. But over the last few years, violence has engulfed the country’s Anglophone regions. The United States has particularly important stakes in Cameroon. Following a decade of military cooperation with Cameroonian forces, Washington is obligated to ensure that assistance is not tantamount to complicity. With investment comes the responsibility and leverage to ease the extent of human suffering. Tensions between Anglophone and Francophone populations in the Cameroon’s northwest and southwest regions (NWSW) have been simmering since the 1970s.

In late 2016, however, the government imposed Francophone teachers and lawyers in Anglophone schools and courts, prompting peaceful protests that were met with military action. This fueled existing separatist sentiment among the Anglophone population and led to the formation of several non-state armed groups. Clashes between these armed groups and Cameroonian forces, as well as attacks on civilians, have forced more than half a million people into the NWSW’s dense forests, without proper shelter and little access to food and basic services. Separatist groups have enforced school boycotts since 2017, leaving a generation of children without education for three years. Warring parties have tortured and killed civilians and burnt down hundreds of villages. Basic services have almost completely collapsed, and, coupled with insecurity, left 1.3 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in the NW/SW alone—numbers the government of Cameroon staunchly denies.

Despite the dire need, the governments of the world have been practically silent on the humanitarian situation, leading the Norwegian Refugee Council to dub the conflict in the NWSW the world’s most neglected displacement crisis. Most efforts by interested political powers and typical humanitarian donors, such as Canada, Switzerland and the United States, are focused on finding a political solution to the conflict. But amidst these efforts, the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate and remains largely ignored. The United States’ interests in Cameroon are not trivial. Over the past five years, Cameroon has received more than $216 million in U.S. counter terrorism training and support. And even with some U.S. cuts due to credible reports of human rights abuses, such assistance continues.

In contrast, U.S. humanitarian aid for those Cameroonian civilians impacted by disaster resulting from the violence in NWSW is minuscule. Out of $18.4 million in U.S. humanitarian aid countrywide, only $300,000 has been earmarked for the response in the NWSW. Such meager support signals that the United States is not concerned with civilian suffering in the NWSW. In addition, the United States has done little to encourage international donors to respond to the Anglophone crisis. So far, the emergency has only received nine percent of funds requested in a United Nations international appeal, rendering most humanitarian organizations incapable of effectively addressing the mounting needs.  Congress has only just begun to weigh in.

In late April, Reps. Karen Bass (D-CA) and Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced a resolution calling on armed groups and the government of Cameroon to seek a political solution to the conflict. Unfortunately, all parties to the conflict have categorically refused calls for dialogue while people continue to suffer. For this reason, Congress should press the State Department and USAID to adequately fund the response, mobilize other donors, and pressure the government of Cameroon to give aid workers access to civilian populations in need. At a time when none of the warring parties seem willing to talk, focusing efforts solely on dialogue is not only ineffective but irresponsible.

The people of the NWSW require more than that. They require sustained engagement by the United States and other international powers to boost humanitarian aid until all parties are prepared to end the conflict, with the ultimate goal of facilitating the safe, voluntary, and dignified return to their homes. Washington has the resources to quickly and effectively respond to such pressing needs.  It is past time for Congress and State Department to step up and play a larger role in addressing the humanitarian consequences of the conflict. The alternative—silence and inaction—means more innocent Cameroonian lives will be lost.

Culled from National Interest.Org

The split within the Cameroonian English-speaking secessionist movement over the choice of Switzerland as the mediator in its dispute with the Yaoundé government threatens to derail the initiative.

The about-face came just as final adjustments for the talks were being made. The Swiss claim the initiative has the support of the international community and denounced these new maneuvers, saying it would be a step back in the dialogue process.

There have been growing doubts, however, about the neutrality of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), the institution mandated by the Swiss authorities to conduct the talks. The main grievance relates to possible collusion between Geneva and Yaoundé.

Facilitator or mediator?

At the beginning of July, when President Paul Biya was in Geneva on a private visit, the secessionist leader of the Ambazonia Governing Council (AGC) Lucas Ayaba Cho issued a statement denouncing the “too close” relationship that he held existed between Geneva and Yaoundé.

He called on Switzerland to clarify its position. “[It] must clearly tell us if they are just a facilitator or a mediator. We will agree to work with Switzerland if it agrees to discuss with the mediator who will speak on behalf of Ambazonia, while it represents Cameroon,” he said. The AGC is one of the secessionist factions with an armed wing on the ground in Cameroon.

Apparently, during discreet preparatory meetings on 25 and 27 June, there was no direct dialogue between the English-speaking separatists and Cameroonian officials. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) clarified its role as mediator in a communiqué on 27 June, stating that it had been “mandated by a majority of the parties to facilitate an inclusive negotiation process”.

A source within the HD Centre, supported this, claiming that it was the main separatist groups “who approached Switzerland first” in order that it could open up a path of dialogue with the Cameroonian government.

Transparency should be the rule

The source went on to state that: “Our work has consisted in making contact with the multitude of groups that abound in the diaspora, in order to have a fairly representative range of the Ambazonian movement. We invited about ten of them and had two meetings with them. We also made an offer to the Cameroonian authorities through their ambassador, which was endorsed by the President of the Republic.”

The Swiss FDFA said it adhered to “the principle of discretion, in order not to compromise the process”. It further stated: “Discretion was a request from both parties to avoid controversy in the contact phase, to protect the process and to allow everyone to agree on the basis.”

This so-called discretion, however, is at the root of the suspicion of some participants, who believe that “transparency should be the rule”. The Consortium of Anglophone Civil Society Actors (CACSC), the organisation behind the first political demands made 2016, stated in a press release on 8 July, that transparency is a guarantee of trust.

“Trust is essential when engaging in such debates because it is only what can ensure that all parties accept the conclusions,” said the CACSC in its statement.

Call for mediation

There has been silence in Yaoundé about the follow-up to the first steps of the dialogue initiated by Switzerland. Having returned from his private trip to Geneva disrupted by Cameroonian political opponents, President Paul Biya has yet to comment on the subject.

Within the Cameroonian administration, however, the dissent expressed by secessionist groups did not go unnoticed. “These secessionists are making an unhealthy overbid,” said an anonymous official from the Ministry of Territorial Administration. “It is purely bad faith, they were all unanimous when they called for dialogue. They say they are fighting for their people, but in reality they do not care about them at all or they would not make that kind of decision when we are on the way out of the crisis. Mediation is the only way to resolve the conflict and end the violence.”

Swiss approach not inclusive

Geneva has not commented since its last communiqué but has received the support of the international community, including the United Nations and the United States, whose leaders have welcomed the initiative. Swiss officials anonymously condemned “false information that tends to undermine the credibility of the process”. They also indicated that the time is right for the final adjustments, and that talks should begin “within three months at the latest”.

On the ground, however, local observers point out that, despite it being a positive initiative, the approach by the Swiss mediators has its limitations. Joseph Léa Ngoula, a security expert, said the Swiss approach is not sufficiently inclusive to allow all parties to express themselves.

“The Swiss approach, although beneficial, remains insufficient to stop the spiral of violence that is spreading to the different regions of Cameroon,” he said. “It includes only a limited number of actors, leaving aside all the social and political forces that have a very important role to play in stabilising crisis zones in Cameroon.

Source: The Africa Report

Cameroon President Paul Biya said Monday he was delaying local elections to 2020, a declaration read on the radio said Monday, the second time in two years that the poll has been postponed.

“The mandate of municipal councillors elected on September 30, 2013 has been extended until February 29, 2020,” Biya declared, which essentially sets the poll back until that date. No reason was given for the extension.

On July 11, 2018, the elections were postponed a first time using the same method. Biya, who is 86, has been in power for 36 years.

Legislative elections could now be delayed as well because the government wants to hold them at the same time to cut costs, deputies told AFP.

Cameroon is in the midst of a security crisis that has pitted separatist English-speaking regions in the west against the French-speaking population elsewhere. In the north, the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram stages regular armed attacks meanwhile.

The country is also facing political ructions, with the head of the opposition Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon, Maurice Kamto, and about 100 of the party’s supporters still in jail after their arrest in January.

(AFP)