Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, is among former world leaders and Nobel Prize Winners calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Cameroon’s North West and South West regions.
They say the ongoing Anglophone Crisis is the most neglected crisis, with the UN Security Council looking the other way why the situation gradually slides into pre-genocide proportions.
With at least 12,000 cases of the novel coronavirus in Cameroon, Adams in an exclusive interview with DW Africa said, a humanitarian ceasefire is needed to allow the people in the Anglophone regions to get access to much-needed healthcare.
In a Global Campaign for Peace and Justice in Cameroon, the laureates and ex-presidents advised the government to end all forms of violence in the two troubled regions and concentrate on fighting the Coronavirus and stamping it out of the continent as a whole.
Some of the dignitaries include Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Denis Mukwege, former South African President Hon FW de Klerk, and former president of Chile Hon. Ricardo Lagos amongst others.
They call on the government of Cameroon and the Anglophone militia to call for a humanitarian ceasefire, echoing the UN’s global ceasefire call, made by the secretary-general, Antonio Guterres.
The Global Campaign for Peace and Justice in Cameroon has equally challenged international bodies to use their tools and their strengths to make sure that peace returns to Cameroon.
In their statement calling for collective action towards peace in Cameroon, they equally lauded the UN secretary general’s call for a global ceasefire so as to focus on mitigating covid19 in conflicting zones worldwide.
They equally bring attention to the fact that the disease cannot be effectively fought while the infrastructures and institutions to help limit the spread are constantly under attacks from both the military and the separatists’ forces in the North West and the South West Regions; they’ve asked all parties to put the people’s immediate health, lives, and livelihoods ahead of military objectives and to bravely and openly declare an end to violence.
It was generally hoped when the Coronavirus was declared a pandemic by the UN, together with some major cases being discovered in Cameroon, that the conflicting zones in the country were going to experience a general return to normalcy so that the disease could unanimously be treated from the country.
This however was never the case, as there are even increased levels of insurgencies in both regions by both government militia and the separatist groups.
