Category Archives: Cameroon

‘They punished me for having books’: schools in Cameroon terrorised by armed groups

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Human Rights Watch says armed separatists in anglophone regions have made schools a battleground, with hundreds of school pupils and teachers attacked, kidnapped or threatened

Armed separatists in Cameroon’s anglophone regions have attacked, kidnapped and threatened hundreds of school pupils in nearly five years of violence that has forced more than 230,000 children to flee their homes, a report has found.

In a detailed analysis of the conflict that has gripped the English-speaking regions since 2017, dozens of students and teachers speak of brutal attacks by armed groups who have made education a battleground in their fight to form their own state.

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Ethiopia suspends aid groups for ‘spreading misinformation’

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Médecins Sans Frontières and Norwegian Refugee Council, active in war-torn Tigray, in talks over ban

The Ethiopian government has suspended the work of two international aid organisations for three months, including in the conflict-hit Tigray region, accusing them of spreading misinformation.

Ethiopia Current Issues Fact Check, a government-run website focused on Tigray, accused Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) of violating several rules.

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No man’s land: three people seeking asylum stuck in Cyprus’s buffer zone

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The Cameroonians, who had ‘no idea’ they had jumped into the demilitarised area, have been trapped for almost two months

A few months after Grace Ngo flew into Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus from her native Cameroon, she decided to head “for the west”. Smugglers pointed the student in the direction of the Venetian walls that cut through the heart of Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital.

A little before midnight on 24 May, Ngo leapt from the breakaway Turkish Cypriot republic into what she hoped would be the war-divided island’s internationally recognised Greek south.

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Two transgender women jailed in Cameroon over homosexuality law

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Social media celebrity Shakiro and friend given five-year sentences as rights groups fear crackdown on LGBT+ community

Two transgender women in Cameroon have been convicted of “attempting homosexuality” and sentenced to five years in prison, in a case feared to be part of a growing campaign against sexual minorities, according to rights groups.

Shakiro, a popular social media figure, and Patricia were convicted on Tuesday. The charges included public indecency and non-possession of a national ID card, an offence rarely prosecuted in Cameroon.

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Almost 30 million will need aid in Sahel this year as crisis worsens, UN warns

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Armed conflicts, the climate crisis and Covid-19 are contributing to chronic risk of food insecurity in the region, says Unocha report

A record 29 million people will need humanitarian assistance in the Sahel and the Lake Chad basin in 2021 amid a deepening crisis, a report by the UN office for humanitarian affairs (Unocha) has estimated.

Almost one in four people in the border areas of Burkina Faso, northern Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger and north-east Nigeria are expected to need aid in 2021, 5 million more than a year ago, and a 52% rise on 2019.

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On International Women’s Day, let’s give feminist groups the funding they need | Zoneziwoh Mbondgulo-Wondieh

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In Cameroon, and across the world, grassroot organisations like mine have been on the Covid frontline. Now we need proper support

When Covid-19 first entered Cameroon, where I live and work, I knew that women would be among the worst affected by the ensuing crisis. Across the world during the pandemic, violence against women and girls has soared, and women are also bearing the brunt of the economic fallout.

These same dynamics are at play in Cameroon, but many women here now find themselves in a doubly difficult situation. As the world has gone online, digital gaps in Cameroon have left the majority of women disconnected, unable to access education or connect with one another. A 2015 report revealed that only 36% of women in Cameroon were internet users – and very little has changed since then.

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New claims of migrant abuse as Ice defies Biden to continue deportations

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Ice condemned as ‘rogue agency’ after rights groups allege torture by agents and man deported to Haiti who had never been there

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has been denounced as a “rogue agency” after new allegations of assaults on asylum seekers emerged, and deportations of African and Caribbean migrants continued in defiance of the Biden administration’s orders.

Joe Biden unveiled his immigration agenda on Tuesday, and his homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was confirmed by the Senate, but the continued deportations suggested the Biden White House still does not have full control of Ice, which faces multiple allegations of human rights abuses and allegations that it has disproportionately targeted black migrants.

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Boko Haram kidnaps 40 loggers and kills three in north-east Nigeria

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Hostages have been taken and three bodies found in the Wulgo forest, close to the border with Cameroon

Boko Haram jihadists have seized about 40 loggers and killed three others in north-east Nigeria near the border with Cameroon, militia sources and residents have said.

The hostages were rounded up by the insurgents on Thursday in Wulgo forest near the town of Gamboru, where they went to collect firewood, the sources said.

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Report clears WWF of complicity in violent abuses by conservation rangers

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But independent review criticises wildlife fund’s inconsistent approach to human rights

A long-awaited report into allegations that conservation rangers supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) committed violent abuses in several countries, including murder, has cleared the organisation’s staff of complicity but criticised it for serious shortcomings in oversight.

But even as the report was released, campaigners for tribal rights – including Survival International, which has long been a critic of WWF – suggested the report had failed to investigate some of the most serious issues and that it had been released two days before the US Thanksgiving holiday in an attempt to bury the news.

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US to send asylum seekers home to Cameroon despite ‘death plane’ warnings

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Move by the Trump administration comes despite reports that other deportees have gone missing since being repatriated

The US is expected to fly Cameroonian asylum seekers back to their home country on Tuesday despite fears that their lives will be at risk and reports that deportees repatriated last month are now missing.

Some of the deportees are activists from the country’s anglophone minority, who face arrest warrants for their political activities from government forces with a well documented record of extrajudicial killings. They and their lawyers refer to Tuesday’s flight as the “death plane”.

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For the sake of Cameroon, life-president Paul Biya must be forced out | Vava Tampa

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The country should be rich, but millions live in dire poverty. France must stop supporting the president and his electoral ploys

On 6 December, Africa’s oldest serving leader, Paul Biya, and his ruling party, Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC), will be declared the winner of the country’s first ever regional elections.

That much is clear, and is expected inside and outside of the west African country – Biya has misruled with an iron fist for nearly 40 years. But the question we should be asking, but as yet have not, is what this means for Cameroon’s 25 million people. In my view the answer is more poverty, more violence, more corruption and more suffering. This should compel us all to act.

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Gunmen kill at least six children in attack on Cameroon school

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Attackers fired indiscriminately at schoolchildren in area where separatist insurgents are active

Gunmen stormed a school in Cameroon on Saturday and opened fire indiscriminately, killing at least six children and wounding about eight more in a region where separatist insurgents operate, officials and parents said.

Arriving on motorbikes and in civilian clothes, the attackers hit the school around midday in the city of Kumba in the Southwest Region, according to the accounts, including from one parent outside the school at the time.

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US Ice officers ‘used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders’

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Cameroonians say officers choked, beat and threatened to kill them, as lawyers tell of pre-election removal drive

US immigration officers allegedly tortured Cameroonian asylum seekers to force them to sign their own deportation orders, in what lawyers and activists describe as a brutal scramble to fly African migrants out of the country in the run-up to the elections.

Many of the Cameroonian migrants in a Mississippi detention centre refused to sign, fearing death at the hands of Cameroonian government forces responsible for widespread civilian killings, and because they had asylum hearings pending.

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Jihadists kill 14 soldiers in attack on Nigerian army base

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Islamic State West Africa Province fighters fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, sources say

Jihadists linked to the Islamic State group have killed 14 Nigerian soldiers in an attack on an army base, military sources have said.

Two sources told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity that fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) group had attacked the base in Jakana on Friday evening, firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

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Chad halts lake’s world heritage status request over oil exploration

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Exclusive: African state says it has agreements with oil companies in Lake Chad area

Chad has asked to suspend an application for world heritage site status for Lake Chad to explore oil and mining opportunities in the region, it can be revealed.

In a letter leaked to the Guardian, Chad’s tourism and culture minister wrote to Unesco, the body which awards the world heritage designation, asking to “postpone the process of registering Lake Chad on the world heritage list”.

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Vaccine-derived polio spreads in Africa after defeat of wild virus

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Fresh cases of disease linked to oral vaccine seen in Sudan, following outbreak in Chad

A new polio outbreak in Sudan has been linked to the oral polio vaccine that uses a weakened form of the virus.

News of the outbreak comes a week after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that wild polio had been eradicated in Africa.

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‘Our dead are buried there’: Ebo logging decree sparks anger in Cameroon

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Ebo forest is home to hundreds of rare species including Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees

A Cameroonian government decree allowing logging in a forest that is home to some of the world’s most endangered species has sparked outrage among local communities and conservation groups.

The richly biodiverse Ebo forest is one of the last intact forests in central Africa and home to hundreds of rare flora and animal species.

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‘Will we die of hunger?’: how Covid-19 lockdowns imperil street children

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For millions of young people, coronavirus restrictions have made access to food, water and shelter even more precarious

Timothy, a teenager on the streets of Mombasa, wonders how he will eat. “Rich people can stay home … because they have a store well stocked with food,” he says. “For a survivor on the street your store is your stomach.”

However, says another, if the rumours are true and street children are arrested in the city during the Covid-19 crisis, he’d be happy to go to Shimo women’s prison, because there “you are sure to get free food, shelter and medical services”.

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