The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Wednesday for improved access to Cameroon’s conflict-ridden Anglophone regions and urged revisions to an anti-terror law that has been criticized for stifling dissent.
Since 2017, separatist militias have been clashing with government forces in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions, resulting in thousands of deaths and the displacement of nearly 800,000 people.
“I have called on the government to facilitate humanitarian access to areas affected by conflict,” said Volker Turk, following a two-day visit to the Central African nation.
Turk also pressed the government to revise the 2014 anti-terrorism law, which rights groups like Amnesty International have condemned as repressive. Amnesty argues that the law, which includes the death penalty, restricts rights guaranteed by Cameroon’s constitution and has been used to target individuals from the Anglophone regions.
A 2022 report by Amnesty International found that the majority of people imprisoned from these regions were sentenced under the anti-terrorism law. In 2017, a journalist was sentenced to 10 years in prison on terrorism charges under the same legislation.
