|
FEATURE-Left in limbo, elections offer hope for CAR refugees in Cameroon
|
|
Thomson Reuters Foundation, 08/12/2015
|
|
By Josiane Kouagheu
GADO-BADZERE, Cameroon, Dec 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - W ith her two-month-old baby on one arm, Mariam Gary squats down in the dimly-lit kitchen to fry fish over a wood fire as she prepares dinner for her five children.
Daily survival is a struggle for Mariam in the simple clay house in a small town in eastern Cameroon, home for the 33-year-old and her children since they fled fighting in the Central African Republic more than two years ago.
Since mainly Muslim Seleka rebels briefly seized power in a coup in early 2013, the majority Christian Central African Republic has been torn by religious violence which has killed thousands, uprooted almost a million and divided the nation.
"We fled Bangui and walked to Cameroon without any belongings or money. I lost my brothers and sisters along the way, cut to pieces by machetes," Mariam said, her eyes floodi... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
|
Violence, refugees pile pressure on Cameroonian communities - U.N.
|
|
Reuters, 26/10/2015
|
|
By Kieran Guilbert
DAKAR, Oct 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Escalating violence in northern Cameroon combined with an influx of refugees from Nigeria and Central African Republic is placing immense strain on local communities already struggling to survive, the United Nations' aid chief said on Monday.
Cross-border raids and suicide bombings by suspected Boko Haram forces have uprooted more than 80,000 people in Cameroon's Far North region over the last year, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says.
The region is also home to 60,000 Nigerian refugees who have fled attacks by the militant group since the start of 2013.
Boko Haram, which has waged a brutal six-year campaign to carve out an Islamist caliphate, used Cameroon's north to stockpile supplies and recruits until a government crackdown last year, but the militants have ramped up attacks th... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
|
Ouvertures des archives au Cameroun: Hollande a marqué des points
|
|
RFI, 05/07/2015
|
|
Vendredi lors de son étape camerounaise, François Hollande a été le premier chef d'Etat français a reconnaître implicitement un pan trouble et méconnu de l'histoire entre la France et le Cameroun, qui dans les années 1950 et 1960 a vu des troupes françaises réprimer les aspirations a l'indépendance des nationalistes camerounais. Les combats auraient fait des milliers de morts. L'affaire nourrit un certain sentiment anti-français au Cameroun. Hollande a levé le tabou à Yaoundé et soulevé du coup l'enthousiasme des Camerounais.
L’attente était forte, mais la réponse inespérée. En entrouvrant une brèche dans l’histoire douloureuse entre la France et le Cameroun, François Hollande a marqué les esprits à Yaoundé et notamment ceux des dirigeants actuels de l’Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC), le parti historique des nationalistes camerounais d’avant et... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
|
Suspected Central African Republic rebels kill three in Cameroon raid
|
|
Reuters, 25/04/2015
|
|
A suspected group of armed rebels from the Central African Republic killed three people in a village in neighbouring Cameroon and kidnapped seven others, the latest in a spate of cross-border attacks, Cameroon state radio said on Friday.
Residents in Mbeng village said the attack took place early on Thursday when masked assailants entered the village. They shot three women and took away five others. The same group is suspected to have seized two other people the next day.
Armed bands from the Central African Republic have carried out raids across the border since their country descended into chaos in March 2013 when the Seleka rebel group seized power. A transitional government is now in place but attacks continue, prompting Cameroon to deploy special forces on the border.
In March, 15 people including a mayor and local government officials were kidnapped in a similar attack.
... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
|
UNHCR Chief appeals for more aid to Cameroon
|
|
UNHCR, 26/03/2015
|
|
UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has called for greatly increased humanitarian and development assistance to Cameroon after touring a camp that is hosting tens of thousands of refugees who escaped violence in neighbouring Nigeria.
"Cameroon has demonstrated an enormous generosity opening its borders, its doors and its houses, the hearts of its people, to now more than 350,000 refugees from Nigeria and from the Central African Republic," Guterres said after listening to the experiences of those in Minawao camp in Cameroon's Far North Region on Wednesday.
"But Cameroon is also suffering the impact of a dramatic security situation in the Far North part of the country due to events in Nigeria," he said. The region now hosts an estimated 74,000 Nigerian refugees, of which 42,000 have been verified by UNHCR.
Opened in July 2013, some 90 kilometers from the volatile ... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
|
Growing numbers of young CAR refugees arrive in Cameroon with malnutrition
|
|
UNHCR, 22/05/2014
|
|
Houriatou is distraught and in tears. She has become used to loss since her native Central African Republic exploded into violence last December, but the death of her 18-month-old grandson, Djaratou, from severe malnutrition seemed particularly cruel to her, and she can't hold back. The 40-year-old refugee from Central African Republic sits and mourns on the hospital bed where the baby just died in the eastern Cameroon town of Batouri. He was also being treated for a nasty cudgel wound, inflicted by militiamen during the flight from the Central African Republic. Houriatou finds it difficult to understand why Djaratou should have died after surviving the gruelling flight and journey, when finding enough food to eat was part of the ordeal. "We walked for three months in the forest. It was terrible. We only ate leaves on the road. We walked until our feet were swollen," she recalls...... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
|
Israeli soccer coaches play ball with refugees in Cameroon
|
|
Ynet News, 01/01/2015
|
|
Over 3,000 refugee children from Central African Republic take part in special soccer workshop led by delegation of Israeli coaches: 'Soccer instead of war.'
By Itamar Eichner
A delegation of Israeli soccer coaches recently arrived at a remote refugee camp in Cameroon that is home to refugee children who fled ongoing violence in the Central African Republic.
Equipped with soccer balls and nets, the coaches tried to spread the "gospel of soccer" among the camp's children, who are suffering from severe trauma as a result of the brutal war ravaging their country.
The project was initiated by the Israeli Embassy in Cameroon in cooperation with the "Mifalot Education and Society Enterprises" organization and a UN human rights organization.
Members of the organization conducted a series of training sessions and activities for the local children in an attempt to encourage... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
|
Escape from a Nightmare
|
|
Foreign Policy Magazine, 11/12/2014
|
|
By Peter Bouckaert
EASTERN CAMEROON — Aboubakar Goton, 40, used to be wealthy and influential. Just over a year ago, Goton, a Muslim, was the mayor of Bossemptélé, a trading center of 22,000 residents in the Central African Republic (CAR). He owned one of the town’s biggest shops and had a large herd of cattle, a traditional sign of wealth in the mostly rural country.
Today, none of that remains. I met Goton in the sprawling Gado refugee camp in Cameroon, home to some 18,000 people. He showed me the tiny tent he shares with a fellow refugee he barely knows and the handful of belongings he still owns. He sleeps on a mat on the floor. Every day, he looks for work digging holes for tent frames for newly arrived refugees. He tries to get by on two meals a day, to save enough money to keep his kids in school nearby. Only the pride of his former status remains: As he walks through ... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
|
Orphans in the Kitchen
|
|
UNHCR, 24/11/2014
|
|
The mist clears over Gado-Badzere, the largest site in Cameroon for refugees from the Central African Republic. It is 6:30 a.m. when little faces begin to emerge. Big dark eyes open wide, tiny bodies stretch and slowly make their way to a towering hut open to the four winds.
This is the realm of Adama Hamadou. As Gado’s resident cook, she is already busy with her cauldrons. But this 31-year-old refugee will not neglect her other mission: to look after her 10 wards, whose parents died or were separated from them in the course of a brutal war back home. As young as 18 months and as old as 16 years, they have found a new family in Adama, the woman they call “Mama Ada.”
It is hardly a coincidence that this kitchen is located smack in the centre of Gado. It’s time for morning porridge and a crowd quickly draws in from all sides. Some come sporadically. “My mother is sick and c... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
|
Solidarity between different generations of Central African refugees in Cameroon
|
|
UNHCR, 12/08/2014
|
|
GBITI, Cameroon, August 12 (UNHCR) – Motivated by a sense of solidarity, Bouba Mairama has been a mother figure to many of the thousands of refugees who fled Central African Republic earlier this year and crossed the border to the small town of Gbiti. She provided clothes to replace their rags; she gave them food and water, she took in and educated unaccompanied children and she offered helpful advice to women and girls emerging from the bush.
Mairama had made the journey herself, but eight years before in 2006, fleeing from Bozoum in the west of Central African Republic with her family because of growing lawlessness and attacks on her ethnic Peul community. "We fled at night. We did not even have shoes," she recalled, adding that her husband had later died of illness in Cameroon.
The current situation is far worse, with stepped up inter-communal violence since December causing t... |
|
En lire plus
|
|
Rechercher 
