13 November 2020
Cameroon Education under Attack: An Urgent Policy Brief
Dear Reader:
Please find herewith an Urgent Policy Brief entitled "Cameroon: Education under Attack". This Brief provides an overview of recent attacks against schools and education in Cameroon's historically Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions, including the grave incident of killing of students on 24 October 2020, for attending school. In order to assist policymakers working on this conflict to curb and halt this practice, the Brief provides enhanced contextual analysis on why attacks against schools and education have become for some combatants, central to prosecuting the conflict.
The Brief also highlights, as reported by the U.N. Secretary General in June 2020, that Cameroon's Anglophone crisis has been placed on a watch-list, which is reported to the U.N. Security Council, of armed conflicts where the parties are committing the worst forms of violence against children. Established under U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1539, 1612, and 1998, this procedure blacklists parties engaged in armed conflicts around the world who: (i) recruit and use children in armed conflict, (ii) kill and maim children, (iii) commit rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, (iv) commit attacks on schools and hospitals, (v) abduct children, and (vi) deny humanitarian relief access to children.
The Brief concludes with recommendations on how to resolve such crises where the education sector itself an integral part of the conflict’s points of contestation and its drivers. This requires including conflict over education into the wider political and institutional resolution of the crisis.
Author: Constitutional Options Project