From The New Humanitarian, April 17

Photo: Jesuit Historical Institute in Africa

From The New Humanitarian, Feb. 13

Image: INPACT

Photo: Twitter via Peoples Dispatch

“The initial 14 [deportees] were brought to Ghana on Sept. 6,” lead lawyer Oliver Barker-Vormawor explained to media outlets. “Three were deported [from Ghana] that night. Eleven were held in military detention. Out of that 11, 10 were deported with the matter in court, and eight of them are in Togo.”

The deportations arose from a “third country deportation” agreement between the US and Ghana earlier this year. Ghana’s parliamentary minority bloc has now called for its suspension, as leaders claim the government entered into the agreement without proper legislative approval. Samuel Abu Jinapor, a ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Ghana’s Parliament, argued:

The government’s conduct in operationalizing the agreement with the United States without parliamentary ratification is a direct constitutional violation of Article 75 and an affront to the authority of the [Ghanan] Supreme Court. It is therefore deeply concerning that the government continues to operationalize the agreement despite this flagrant operational breach.

Ghana’s Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa told local media that the decision to enter into the agreement was not a signal of support for the US administration, but rather a decision “grounded purely on humanitarian principle and Pan-African empathy.” However, reports have claimed that Ablakwa and President John Mahama may also be motivated by the hope that the White House will lift travel restrictions on Ghanaians entering the US as consideration for the agreement.

After initial pushback from federal courts, in July the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to enter into third-country deportation agreements with multiple nations, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Eswatini, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda. International organizations have warned that the policy risks great harm to individuals, and skirts government accountability.

The West African deportees also filed a lawsuit in the US courts last month, asserting that they were taken from an immigration facility, shackled, placed in straitjackets, and flown to Ghana in a cargo plane without meaningful notice or hearing.

From JURIST, Oct. 7. Used with permission.

Photo: Venezuelan deportees in Honduras. Credit: ICE via Wikimedia Commons

Macron stated that the historians of the Franco-Cameroonian Commission studied the war that began in 1956, finding that colonial authorities and the French army deliberately used repressive violence against the Cameroonian population. He added that the war continued after Cameroonian independence in 1960, with France supporting state repression in a post-independence power struggle that lasted through 1971.

Macron pledged to open France’s archives and declassify documents pertaining to French actions in Cameroon; however, he did not apologize, nor did he mention any further steps toward reconciliation.

The letter follows release of the report by the Franco-Cameroonian Commission, which traced the history of violence in Cameroon from 1945 to 1971. The commission was initiated by Macron following a trip to Cameroon in 2022. The report found France responsible for numerous atrocities, including sending hundreds of thousands to internment camps and funding paramilitary death squads. Much of the repression was directed towards the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), a left-wing political party which was the main force in the independence movement. France denounced the UPC as communist and banned the party, which forced the movement underground, thus beginning a protracted guerrilla war that ended with pro-France Ahmadou Ahidjo as the head of the newly independent state in 1960.

However, French political violence and repression against opposition groups, particularly the UPC, continued after independence. The report details France’s assassination of UPC leaders Paul Momo, Isaac Nyobè Pandjock, Jérémie Ndélélé and Félix Moumié, as well as UPC founder Ruben Um Nyobè. Nyobè preached a doctrine of non-violence, and any mention of him was banned in Cameroon until the 1990s.

The head of the Association of Cameroonian Veterans and former UPC fighter, Mathieu Njassep, said the acknowledgement is a welcome step, but urged France to go further and consider reparations.

This acknowledgment comes in sharp contrast to France’s previous denial of its atrocities during the Cameroon war, despite established historical consensus. Macron has also acknowledged French responsibility in the Rwandan Genocide, crimes committed during the Algerian War, and the 1944 Thiaroye massacre in Senegal, making the most recent acknowledgment the latest chapter in Macron’s careful and calculated moves toward admission of France’s violent colonial and neo-colonial history in Africa.

From JURIST, Aug. 14. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Image: Wikipedia

Amnesty emphasized that Ali had to wait three years before receiving his sentence, which it considered an “extreme punishment” for merely exercising his right to free speech. The rights group also criticized the military trial given the activist, stating that it violated both Cameroonian laws and international human rights law. Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) prohibits the trial of civilians before military courts. Article 19 of the covenant protects the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to seek, receive and impart information by any means.

Ali had advocated for a Swiss-led mediation process to resolve the armed conflict in Cameroon, and directed the Peace Research Centre in Bamenda, capital of the Northwest Region. He was arrested in August 2022 and was subsequently detained for 84 days at a military police station, where he was interrogated about the video documenting the torture of civilians by a local militia chief.

Cameroon’s Southwest and Northwest regions have been experiencing an armed conflict since 2016 in what is known as the Anglophone crisis. This conflict began with protests in the English-speaking regions against the appointment of French-speaking judges and teachers in those areas. The demonstrations escalated into an armed conflict, as Cameroon’s military confronted separatists in the Anglophone regions who sought the independence of the Southwest and Northwest as the “Federal Republic of Ambazonia.” This conflict has been marked by numerous human rights violations committed by both sides, including killings, sexual violence and abductions, along with a widespread suppression of freedom of speech.

Repression has now spread to the Francophone regions of the country as well. In 2024, supporters of a youth organization in Garoua, capital of North Region, were arrested for their activities.

From JURIST, May 15. Used with permission.

Map: TNH

President Mahamat Déby has vowed vengeance for an attack by jihadists on an army base in Chad’s western Lake region that killed at least 40 soldiers Oct. 27. The insurgents who managed to overrun the base are likely to be from Boko Haram’s “Bakura” faction, which is concentrated in the northern part of the region, on the Niger-Chad border. They’ve been involved in a long-running battle for supremacy in the region with the rival Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP). Their commander, Ibrahim Bakura Doro, has resisted both peace overtures and demands for assimilation by the larger ISWAP group. The night-time attack on the Barkaram base, in which weapons and equipment were captured, follows a military sweep through the region earlier in the year by a joint force of Nigerian, Cameroonian and Chadian troops—which at the time was proclaimed a success.

From The New Humanitarian, Nov. 1. Internal links added.

Photo of Chadian troops via Presidency of Chad/Facebook

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Map: CIA

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The deal is to roughly double overall biodiversity financing to $200 billion a year from all sources—governments, the private sector and philanthropy. It earmarks up to $30 billion per year to flow from wealthy countries to poor ones to assist in conservation programs. But the financial commitments are not binding, and were assailed by many countries in the developing world as inadequate. The bloc of African, Southeast Asian and Latin American governments known as the Like-Minded Mega-Diverse Countries (LMMDs) stressed that those countries with the greatest biodiversity are also among the world’s poorest.

The summit was originally set to be held in Kunming, capital of China’s Yunnan province, in October 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinese environment minister Huang Runqiu presided over the conference despite the venue change. And he especially won opprobrium from African countries for pushing through the pact over their objections.

Following an all-night session, Huang finally brought down the gavel and declared the deal finalized in the early hours—minutes after the delegation from the Democratic Republic of Congo pressed outstanding criticisms. This was decried by the DRC, Uganda and other African delegations. A representative from Cameroon protested: “What we saw was a force of hand.” (UN News, Climate Home News, Carbon Brief, Al Jazeera, NYT, BBC News, CBC)

Photo of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley via Pixabay