HRW accuses Cameroon separatists of violating human rights: Cultural violence or developmental defects?

Armed separatist groups are committing widespread abuses against civilians throughout the English-speaking regions of western Cameroon, Human Rights Watch said.

In a report dated Monday, June 27, Ilaria Allegrozzi, HRW's senior central Africa researcher, said, “Armed separatist groups are kidnapping, terrorizing, and killing civilians across the English-speaking regions with no apparent fear of being held to account by either their own leaders or Cameroonian law enforcement.”

Cameroon was formed as an independent country in the early 1960s when a former French-speaking and English-speaking mandate area were merged. Currently, the West African country has two official languages ​​(English and French), two education systems, and two legal systems.

According to a Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) report in early June, the English-speaking regions of Cameroon are ranked third on the list of “most neglected” displacement crises, based on three criteria: the international community's lack of political will to find solutions, poor media coverage, and lack of funding for humanitarian needs.

In 2016, feeling increasingly deprived, neglected, and oppressed by the ruling French-speaking majority, the English-speaking minority in western Cameroon began organizing peaceful protests, which quickly turned into armed resistance due to the state's violent response. The resistance includes scattered groups with one goal: the formation of the independent state of Ambazonia (Amba Land) in the west of the country.

International NGOs and the United Nations regularly accuse the separatists, as well as the army and police, of committing abuses and crimes against civilians. According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), 6,000 people have been killed since the outbreak of the conflict in 2016, and more than a million people have been forced to flee.

Schools teaching French in the northwestern and southwestern regions of the country are regularly attacked by some armed separatist groups, and civil servants accused of “collaborating” with the central government in the capital, Yaounde, are kidnapped or killed.

According to a UNICEF report in 2019, about 850,000 children were deprived of school in the two English-speaking regions.

The Human Rights Watch report said the separatists stormed the Bamenda University campus on April 5 and fired into the air, causing a stampede that injured at least five people. The fighters were taking revenge on the university for resisting the closure they had announced in the area.

“Cameroon’s regional and international partners should intensify calls on the Cameroonian government for accountability and better protection of civilians. They should also impose targeted sanctions, such as travel bans and asset freezes, on separatist leaders who bear responsibility for committing abuses,” Allegrozzi said.