Cameroon needs stronger AU response

THE violent conflict that erupted in the north-west and south-west regions of Cameroon in 2016 continues unabated.

It was triggered by the government’s repression of protests over the increasing influence of French in the English-speaking legal and educational institutions, and by the perceived marginalisation of the country’s Anglophone regions.

Some Anglophones are demanding increased decentralisation, while others are violently struggling for an independent state called “Ambazonia”.

The conflict has had devastating consequences for the Anglophone regions. According to Crisis Group about 3 000 people have died and half a million have been displaced.

One in three people in the Anglophone

regions are estimated to require humanitarian aid.

Attempts have been made, including the involvement of other countries, to resolve the crisis. For example, Switzerland led a mediation initiative in 2019. But, for its part, the AU has been largely silent on the conflict.

It supported the Swiss-led initiative. It was also party to a joint statement on a tripartite commitment to supporting Cameroon’s ongoing peace and reconciliation process. And the AU head, Moussa Faki Mahamat, visited Cameroonian President Paul Biya in July 2018 and discussed the need for a national dialogue to resolve the conflict. He visited again in November last year.

But the conflict is conspicuously absent from the AU’s Peace and Security Council, its decision-making body on the “prevention, management and resolution of conflicts”.

This is despite the council being mandated to “facilitate timely and efficient response to conflict and crisis situations in Africa”.

The reason for this, we believe, is that a major part of the struggle in Cameroon is separatist in character. Cameroon’s territorial integrity is therefore at stake.

In 1963, the Organisation of African Unity, the predecessor to the AU, adopted the principle of the inviolability of borders inherited from colonisation.

Since then there has been little support for secessionist movements in Africa. Eritrea and South Sudan were able to become independent states and many African countries support Western Sahara’s quest for self-determination. But a host of others – including Biafra, Katanga, Bioko, Zanzibar, Darfur, Casamance and Somaliland – have not seen much support.

Many of Cameroon’s neighbours, and a few on the Peace and Security

Council, face similar challenges and are therefore not sympathetic to this cause. Indeed, the AU chairperson, during his visit to President Biya in 2018, had reconfirmed the AU’s “unwavering commitment to the unity and territorial integrity of Cameroon”.

But the AU is vital to finding a sustainable solution to the conflict in Cameroon.

It needs to overcome this difficulty and step up its lacklustre conflict management response.

Hendricks is the executive director at the Africa Institute of South Africa, Human Sciences Research Council; and Kiven is a PhD candidate in political studies at the Department of Politics and International Relations, the University of Johannesburg. (A full version of this article can be found in The Conversation.)