By Eric Tataw – Washington DC, USA – Monday, December 16, 2019.
Eliot Lance Engel, U.S. Representative for New York’s 16th congressional district and a member of the Democratic Party who’s also Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs requests the United Nations sends a fact-finding mission to Cameroon.
The lawmaker said, December 3, 2019, in a letter to Ambassador Kelly Craft, US Ambassador to the United Nations who recently chaired deliberations at the United Nations Security Council that the Ambassador should lead an effort for the UN to pass a resolution calling for an end of the violence in Cameroon and the establishment of an independent international fact-finding mission.
The lawmaker furthered such a mission could help determine the facts and circumstances of the gross international human rights violations being committed by the country’s military, security forces and armed separatists and hopefully bring an end to crimes and atrocities.
The lawmaker also accuses the Cameroon government of refusing to provide access to international human rights organizations seeking to identify the perpetrators of atrocity crimes.
Congressman Eliot Lance Engel also expressed concerns over an estimated 4.3 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Over 600.000 children have been denied access to education for three years, a part of the statement suggests.
The lawmaker also said he was deeply concerned about the deaths of over 3.000 people, 800.000 IDPs and over 35.000 asylum seekers in Nigeria, adding he hopes to work in synergy with the Ambassador to send a ‘strong signal’ to the Cameroon government and armed groups perpetrating violence.
Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions are wrapped in an armed conflict with a demand by the majority of Anglophones in the North West and South West for a separate state called Ambazonia.
This crisis has led to thousands of deaths, torching hundreds of villages, millions of displaced people and thousands of political prisoners.
