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Les leaders religieux équipés pour la prévention de la violence extrême dans la région de l’Extrême-Nord
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UNDP, 22/09/2016
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Depuis 2014 la crise sécuritaire dans la région de l'Extrême Nord du Cameroun a révélé au grand jour les vulnérabilités socioéconomiques et les pesanteurs culturelles qui sapent l’insertion des couches défavorisées, particulièrement les femmes et les jeunes. Ces fragilités sont sources de conflits et exposent les jeunes particulièrement à l’intolérance et à la violence extrême.
Afin d’appréhender les besoins précis de ces couches fragiles, le PNUD a organisé en 2015, des forums de dialogue au cours desquels les besoins prioritaires des jeunes urbains et ruraux et ceux des femmes ont été identifiés et les axes du dialogue intercommunautaire et interreligieux ont été également tracés.
Dans la continuité de ces activités, un atelier de renforcement des capacités d’encadrement socioéconomique et de prévention de l’extrémisme violent par... |
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Nigeria returnees face shelter problems, economic challenges, food shortages
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UNHCR, 23/09/2016
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As the Nigerian government continues to open up areas formerly controlled by Boko Haram and to facilitate the return of thousands of people to their home areas in the north-east, the scale of the damage is becoming more and more apparent and new humanitarian challenges are emerging.
The government has since late August facilitated the return of several thousand people from Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, to the towns of Dikwa, Konduga and Mafa. Local authorities said they relocated 1,120 people to Dikwa on Tuesday, and more movements are planned in the coming days and weeks.
Some internally displaced people in Maiduguri have made short return home visits with government assistance to assess the situation. One such group originally from Mafa told us that they were ready to return permanently as soon as the government organized another convoy with armed escorts.
Some had alr... |
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Hunger stalks NE Nigeria as governments and donors to Lake Chad Basin crisis meet
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Oxfam, 23/09/2016
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The ongoing conflict with Boko Haram in West Africa has pushed the number of people facing the threat of severe hunger to more than 6 million according to the latest assessments, say 15 humanitarian organizations. The warning comes as governments and donors meet to talk about the humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad Basin region at the UN General Assembly in New York on the 23 September.
The revised UN appeal is calling for US$559 million until the end of the year to meet the emergency needs caused by the crisis. Organizations say that without more money they are unable to reach the most vulnerable people even in areas that can be accessed.
Over 65,000 people are already living in famine in pockets of northeast Nigeria, and over one million people are one step away from famine. In the countries of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon there are 6.3 million people severely food insecur... |
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Cameroun: les atrocités de Boko Haram hantent les déplacés de l'Extrême-Nord
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Agence France Presse, 19/09/2016
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"Boko Haram a égorgé neuf personnes en ma présence. C'est ce jour (de septembre 2015) que j'ai décidé de quitter mon village", témoigne, encore bouleversée, Rachel Daviguidam, une Camerounaise de 30 ans.
Un an après avoir été témoin de cette atrocité, cette mère de sept enfants n'arrive pas à effacer ces images de sa mémoire et n'envisage pas de retourner à Golvadi, un village de l'Extrême-Nord du Cameroun, frontalier du Nigeria et cible de plusieurs assauts des islamistes nigérians de Boko Haram.
Depuis plus d'un an, Rachel, son mari et leurs enfants vivent à Koza, une petite cité enclavée située en pleine zone montagneuse, à environ 100 km de Maroua, la grande ville de la région.
Comme elle, près de 200.000 Camerounais de la région de l'Extrême-Nord ont fui leurs villages, situés à la frontière du Nigeria, redoutant les exactions de Boko Haram, qu... |
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Cameroon Students Face Setbacks as School Resumes
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voice of America, 07/09/2016
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MAROUA, CAMEROON — Lara Salamatou wants to resume her education, but as Cameroon schools reopened Monday, the 16-year-old could only get lessons in frustration.
She’d tried to enroll in the government high school in Maroua, the Far North provincial capital, after fleeing three months ago from extremist violence near her home in Kerawa on the border with Nigeria. She was turned away because of overcrowded classes and few teachers, she said.
Now, Salamatou is among at least 100,000 displaced youths whose education has been jeopardized this academic year, according to Cameroon’s government.
Authorities recently shut her school in Kerawa, along with 160 others, because of cross-border raids by the Nigerian-based Boko Haram Islamic insurgents. Schools in host communities are overcrowded and insecurity has delayed construction of more classrooms.
Adding to the country’s aca... |
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In the Tracks of Boko Haram in Cameroon
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IRIN, 06/09/2016
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Two years ago, the Cameroonian government declared war on Boko Haram. Despite some progress, the group’s violent impact is still seen and felt deeply in the remote north of the country.
n March 2016, Crisis Group Analyst Hans De Marie Heungoup travelled for four weeks into an insecure area only few researchers are given access to: Cameroon’s Far North Region. He was escorted three days by the military between the front-line towns of Ldamang, Mabass, Kolofata, Amchidé and Gansé, before he went on to travel alone across the region: to Maroua, the Minawao refugee camp, Mokolo, Mora, Kousseri and Goulfey. During the four weeks he spoke to a wide range of people, including traditional chiefs, local inhabitants and administration staff, refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), vigilante groups, local NGOs, humanitarian actors, academics, the military, former Boko Haram member... |
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The 10,000 Kidnapped Boys of Boko Haram
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WSJ, 30/08/2016
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MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—In a forest of thorn trees somewhere far outside this city, the Boko Haram insurgency ran a boot camp for about 100 boys. Children as young as 5 years old learned to handle assault rifles and march through the woods in flip-flops. Their teacher was only 15.
“I was terrified if I didn’t do it, they would kill me,” said Idriss, the teenage instructor, in an interview. He said he was kidnapped by the militants in 2014 but has since escaped.
While the world focused on Boko Haram’s mass kidnappings of women and girls, the Islamist group was stealing an even greater number of boys. Over the past three years, Boko Haram has kidnapped more than 10,000 boys and trained them in boot camps in abandoned villages and forest hide-outs, according to government officials in Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, and to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group. (.... |
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Feature Aid and Policy “The new terrible” Lake Chad region in desperate need
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IRIN, 04/08/2016
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A deepening but often overlooked humanitarian crisis in West Africa’s Lake Chad region has been described “as the new terrible” by the UN’s top relief official, Stephen O’Brien.
Of the region’s 20 million people, 9.2 million are now in need of life-saving assistance, while severe acute malnutrition rates for children under five have surpassed the emergency threshold in the affected areas of four separate countries: Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria.
In a statement to the UN Security Council last week, O’Brien said: “this region, which hosts Africa’s fastest-growing displacement crisis, needs our urgent, united and collective attention.”
It is not just the 2.8 million people forced from their homes by the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram that are in need, but also the local host communities that are sheltering the bulk of the displaced. They are themselves ... |
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Cameroon: Peace, security still a far cry in the North
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africanews, 27/07/2016
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A year after the suicide attack in the northern Cameroon town of Maroua on 25 July, 2015 that left 33 people dead, residents of the town’s district of Pont Vert are remembering the victims.
They organized a silent march in the city’s streets from the Pont Vert area, where a female suicide bomber struck. Among the 33 victims 11 were in this district.
After last year’s attack, a number of measures have been taken by authorities in the region to strengthen security. Curfews have been imposed everywhere, as well as strict controls and searches on all those entering and leaving the area. Certain freedoms have also been limited in the area, with the ban on motorcycle taxis to move people and goods.
The area which has been menaced by the Boko Haram owing to its proximity to the border with Nigeria, has seen economic activities go down as the border remains closed.
The Cameroon... |
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Regional armies struggle in last push against Boko Haram
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Reuters, 27/07/2016
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By Joe Bavier
DIFFA, Niger (Reuters) - "You'll all be able to go home soon. Boko Haram is nearly finished," Niger's Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum told a crowd of refugees seated quietly on dusty, sun-baked flats.
His words of optimism were belied by the dozens-strong security detail required to protect him as he toured his country's southern border.
Seven years into an insurgency that spread from Nigeria into Chad, Niger and Cameroon, regional armies are now in a final push to defeat Boko Haram, a once obscure Islamist sect turned deadly militant group.
But lingering divisions in the countries' multi-national joint task force (MNJTF) are complicating that mission.
"If there's no strategy to attack Boko Haram together, we won't ever finish with them," Mahamadou Liman Ali, an opposition lawmaker from southern Niger, told Reuters in Niamey.
At a time when the world's we... |
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