Politics
to poverty, open theft and corruption, which needs to be addressed. There is no single reason for elections to be anticipated and Paul Biya should, for, once halt any such plans.
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West Africa's Lake Chad region is the world's most neglected humanitarian crisis, where poverty and desertification have been compounded by violence caused by Boko Haram, the U.N. aid chief said on Tuesday at the World Humanitarian Summit.
The gap between the suffering and the humanitarian response may be bigger than in Syria, Iraq or Yemen, a senior Red Cross official said.
Violence has forced more than 2.4 million people to flee their homes in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, according to the United Nations. Many families have been displaced several times. Up to 90 percent are sheltering in host communities.
Both the displaced and their hosts need emergency aid where farming has been curtailed by the violence, deepening food shortages and hunger, U.N. officials said.
More than 480,000 children could die unless they urgently receive food aid, they added.
"Lake Chad Basin ... at this stage is the most under reported, the most underfunded and the least addressed of the big crises we face," U.N. aid chief Stephen O'Brien said.
Climate change and lack of resources have already caused terrible suffering, and this has been compounded by the brutality wreaked by Boko Haram, he added.
Both the displaced and their hosts need emergency aid where farming has been curtailed by the violence, deepening food shortages and hunger, U.N. officials said.
More than 480,000 children could die unless they urgently receive food aid, they added.
"Lake Chad Basin ... at this stage is the most under reported, the most underfunded and the least addressed of the big crises we face," U.N. aid chief Stephen O'Brien said.
Climate change and lack of resources have already caused terrible suffering, and this has been compounded by the brutality wreaked by Boko Haram, he added.
"We have humanitarian needs now in that part of the world on a scale which is unprecedented," said O'Brien, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
This year, the United Nations has appealed for $535 million for the region. Last year's appeal was just over 40 percent funded.
Some 3 million people face severe food insecurity in the region, the majority in northeast Nigeria. In the far north of Cameroon, the number urgently needing food aid has quadrupled in the last year, according to U.N. figures.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said it was rapidly scaling up its response to avoid a "famine-like situation".
"Across Lake Chad, where farming is possible but not practical because so much insecurity exists, the crisis disrupts trade, and the pastoral and agricultural lean season has come two months early," said WFP head Ertharin Cousin.
POVERTY IS CAUSE OF "MADNESS"
Yves Daccord, director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said: "Normally I don't like to compare suffering, but if I look at all our operations ... what we see - in terms of levels of violence, of suffering and most importantly, the gap between the humanitarian response ... and what (it) should be - is possibly the biggest gap we have right now."
He was comparing ICRC's operations in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and the Philippines with those in the Lake Chad Basin.
Boko Haram has killed more than 15,000 people across the region, during a seven-year campaign to carve out an Islamist caliphate.
Kashim Shettima, governor of northern Nigeria's Borno state, said poor literacy, destitution and joblessness need to be addressed to end what he called the world's deadliest insurgency.
The conflict, centered on Borno state, hit the headlines when more than 200 girls were kidnapped from a school in Chibok in 2014.
"The root cause of this madness, this insanity, is extreme poverty," he said.
"(When) we create jobs, engage the youth, this madness will certainly evaporate."
O'Brien, who traveled to the May 23-24 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul via Niger and Nigeria, said the region, more than any other, epitomized the many overlapping issues the summit was trying to tackle.
"We've never had a conference like this. This is about generating will, the most difficult thing to bottle up and to get going," he said.
"It's about putting people affected by crisis through no fault of their own at the heart and center of everything we do."
(Reporting by Alex Whiting, Editing by Emma Batha.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change.
Reuters
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Stakeholders from the South West and North West Regions are in Buea for an in-depth capacity building seminar.
Assessing progress made towards decentralization, promotion of local development, target objectives, transfer of powers are some cardinal points currently under the scanner in an ongoing seminar that kicked-off on May 24, 2016 in Buea. For three days, stakeholders from the North West and South West Regions are busy brainstorming on five main themes.
Follow-up and evaluation of transferred powers and allocated resources; the technical support of councils by the State; local finance governance; partnership and local development; funding of international and council projects by the Special Council Support Fund for Mutual Assistance (FEICOM) are the topics under discussion with the help of seasoned professionals.
Addressing participants on Tuesday, the Minister Delegate at the Ministry of Territorial Administration in charge of Decentralisation, Jules Doret Ndongo appreciated support and assistance from international and national partners notably the German Cooperation, FEICOM, the National Community Driven Development Programme (PNDP) and the Local Government Training Centre (CEFAM) in the enhancement and promotion of local development.
The Minister stressed that while participants will be evaluating progress made in the decentralization process, the Buea seminar also paves way for in-depth discussions on the decentralization carried out in Cameroon since 2010, when the effective transfer of special powers and appropriate resources by the State to councils and City Councils started.
Presentations interspersed with questions and answers, have enriched a seminar studded with a galaxy of decentralization stakeholders from the two Regions. As participants say quits today, they informed CT that the initiative is a laudable stitch in time.
Cameroon Tribune
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Prince Ekosso,National president of United Socialist Democratic Party outlines guidlines towards Cameroons emergence USDP's Vision for a Transformed Cameroon:
1-De-intoxicate the minds and mentalities of Cameroonians from the spirit of corruption: by instituting a high level of moral education in the management of State affairs and to live according to the fear of God almighty, the Creator of all things from whom all leadership should draw inspiration.
2-By resolving the anglophone problem in Cameroon.
3 - HEALING AND THE RESTORATION OF WOUNDED /DISAPPOINTED HEARTS. There are certain truths which we can not pretend to ignore among Cameroonians. They may have dated even before some of the younger generations in this country were born, yet, it remains a disturbing factor to the historical evolution of Cameroon.
4 - RETURN OF POLITICAL EXILES
5 - AMNESTY FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS
6 - We will redefine our economic strategies for development through the application of a proper monetary system, (creation of a national currency).
7 - We will redefine the educational system and programs in Cameroon by harmonising both the angloxazone and French system of education, so as to bring out the true spirit of national unity and to produce a citizenry that understands its socio-cultural, economic and political history, and to use the various national features to initiate development.
8 - We will fustering regional balance development through the development of both natural and human resources at the regional levels, so as to resolve the problem of rural exodus (Effective Decentralization).
9 - We will resolve the difficulty in housing conditions of Cameroonians and the cogestion in our towns and cities. This problem will be solved through the strict application of a modern method of town planning system which USDP has already developed.
10 - We will resolve the problem of insecurity in Cameroon by developing new strategies to assure the security of persons and properties through out the national territory. Apply a system of security where every Cameroonian will become a reporter of evil practice, and also train our military and police personels in modern technological ways of combating insecurity and terrorism.
11 - We will improve the road network and create more accessible roads around the national territory so as to permit local transactions to main cities without stress, thereby, provoking an economic fast turnovers at individual and collective levels.
12 – We will resolve the burden of high taxes in Cameroon, especially on national private enterprises so as to increase productivity and encourage exportation.
13 – We will transform and restore the spirit of research in science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and to lower its cost. Most of our people, especially the poor, die because of lack of good medical attention and lack of medical specialized personels and equipments. We will collaborate with Cameroonian medical personels who will be able to transfer modern medical technics to our hospitals and create a viable medical system that respond to the critical health issues of our population.
14 – We will transform our schools and colleges and universities so as to meet the demands of a new and growing generation of Cameroonians, and create a Higher Educational Program (HEP) which will concentrate on professionalisation and skill development. This will encourage more job creation and reduce the temptation of university graduate to depend on government concours for jobs.
15 – We pledge to work alongside with regional and local authorities to revamp the agricultural domain, make farmers to flourish through the application of modern technological methods in farming so as to increase productivity. Thereby, resolving the problem of food shortages in the nation of Cameroon and to export to neighboring nations.
16 – We will resolve the problem of DUAL NATIONALITY in the Cameroon Constitution, by the passing of a special Bill to legalize and legitimize DUAL NATIONALITY for all Cameroonians. This will enable Cameroonians who have acquired other nationality and who desire to come back to Cameroon with great investments to do so without any constraints. All these we can do, and all these we will do.
17- We will create millions jobs for the youths while targeting the aspect of professionalisation and to oriented talents and skill development in the domain of arts and the films industry, agriculture, transportation, education, healthcare, housing, electricity, portable water, and internal security.
Chat Conversation End
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There was huge relief after one of the missing Chibok girls was found. She is one of the many captives who have been set free from Boko Haram. But those freed face a tough time of re-integrating back into society.
The last few days seem to have been a bag of good and bad news for the Nigerian military. First, the army received a major morale boost after they paraded one of the missing Chibok girls who was found by a vigilante group roaming the vast Sambisa forest.
The news was quickly followed by another girl being freed, alongside many other women and children rescued from Boko Haram's captivity by Nigerian troops, who are carrying out "Operation Sambisa Crackdown."
The army then said she was another Chibok girl, but it turned out she was not. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people who for a period of time lived under the shadow of what has been described as the world's deadliest terrorist group. An unknown number of people, including the more than 200 Chibok girls, are still being held by the Islamists.
This year, a report by the global children agency UNICEF, warned that freed Nigerian women and their children who were under Boko Haram's control are being rejected by their communities.
The women and girls, who in most cases were raped by Boko Haram militants, forced to marry the fighters or work as domestic workers, return home only to discover they have now been labeled "annoba," a Hausa word which roughly translates to "epidemics" or "Boko Haram wives."
Fears of radicalization
Many residents fear that these women may have been radicalized by Boko Haram. They base their arguments on the rising numbers of suicide bombings that have been carried out by women and girls in recent months. Their rejection by the community is among several unintended consequences of the military's recent successful bid to liberate territories previously held for months by Boko Haram.
DW
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Cameroonian Yeguie Issa says he has not seen his only brother since they were contacted a year ago by visitors to their village and were offered $500 per month to join Boko Haram.
Issa, 29, did not accept the offer and now takes care of his poultry farm in Cameroon's Zamai village, near the northern town of Mokollo. He got started with the help of chickens provided by the government and farming advice from U.N. staff.
As a result, Issa said, he is financially and physically more stable, and he can provide for his wife, three children and 72-year-old mother — and peers no longer jeer at him for being unable to take care of his familyIssa is one of several hundred people who have benefited from the U.N. initiative to steer youths away from Boko Haram, which has frequently attacked northern Cameroon over the past three years.
The coordinator of the U.N. system in Cameroon, Najad Rochdi, said the goal of the initiative is help the area's economy grow despite the continued violence.
"Because the region was tragically and dramatically impacted by insecurity on the one hand and extreme violence on the other hand, it was very important to provide the enabling environment for the revival of the local economy, capitalizing on the know-how of the people in the region," Rochdi said. "Obviously, the know-how here is about agriculture, handicraft, agropastoral activities."
Japan contributes
Cameroon has provided $4 million in emergency funds to create jobs for youths on its northern border with Nigeria, where the unemployment rate is over 90 percent. Japan has contributed $2 million to the U.N. for the second phase of the project, focused on the entire conflict zone in Cameroon.
Ibrahim Hamaoua, traditional ruler of Zamai, said the assistance has reduced delinquency among the 30,000 people he leads.
Hamaoua said he was grateful to the U.N. Development Program and the government of Cameroon for initiating the resilience project and constructing a livestock market to supply protein to both internally displaced persons and refugees. The project has boosted the local economy and improved the living conditions of the population that grow livestock, he said.
About a hundred meters from Issa's poultry farm, Hamza Falama waters his one-hectare garden. He said the produce villagers grow — maize and sorghum during the rainy season, carrots and cabbages during the dry season — enables them to send their children to school, take care of their health needs, feed their families and save for difficult moments.
Cameroon hopes to see more gardens grow, and fewer difficult moments in the north, in order to weaken Boko Haram.
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Subcategories
Biya Article Count: 73
# Paul Biya and his regime
Explore the political landscape of Cameroon under the rule of Paul Biya, the longest-serving president in Africa who has been in power since 1982. Our Paul Biya and his regime section examines the policies, actions, and controversies of his government, as well as the opposition movements, civil society groups, and international actors that challenge or support his leadership. You'll also find profiles, interviews, and opinions on the key figures and events that shape the political dynamics of Cameroon.
Southern Cameroons Article Count: 549
.# Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia
Learn more about the history, culture, and politics of Ambazonia, the Anglophone regions of Cameroon that have been seeking self-determination and independence from the Francophone-dominated central government. Our Southern Cameroons section covers the ongoing conflict, the humanitarian crisis, the human rights violations, and the peace efforts in the region. You'll also find stories that highlight the rich and diverse heritage, traditions, and aspirations of the Southern Cameroonian people.
Editorial Article Count: 885
# Opinion
Get insights and perspectives on the issues that matter to Cameroon and the world with our opinion section. We feature opinions from our editors, columnists, and guest writers, who share their views and analysis on various topics, such as politics, economy, culture, and society. Our opinion section also welcomes contributions from our readers, who can submit their own opinions and comments. Join the conversation and express your opinions with our opinion section.
