Individual Rights and Freedoms – Hold Citizens and the State of Cameroon to Account

Cameroon is well endowed. Strategically located in the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, Cameroon is blessed with natural resources and, above all, people. These are people you can see and hear from everyday, every hour and second, making efforts to live well with one another and everybody, who have come to like sharing in each other’s culture and cultures from far and wide, as witnessed in the way they talk, write, dress, eat, dance, laugh, play football, … as you know!

The people of Cameroon have drawn-up their Constitution on clear universal principles that stem from the ideals of their authentic cultures. They declare in their Constitution, "that the human person, without distinction as to race, religion, sex or belief, possesses inalienable and sacred rights", and have established the State of Cameroon to "guarantee all citizens of either sex the rights and freedoms set forth in the Preamble of the Constitution".

But, as you can also attest, the citizen rights and freedoms are far from being adequately guaranteed. The State the people of Cameroon established to guarantee citizen rights and freedoms has been less than responsive and accountable!

HISTORY

Even as the modern State of Cameroon is founded on apparent citizen rights and freedoms, the country inherited a social pyramid structure of authority in the pedigree of excluding many people from full participation in governance. Today, post independence Cameroon appears on the threshold of collapse, as colonial Cameroon did some years back, only to regenerate itself with little or no improvements, if not deteriorations, in individual rights and freedoms guarantee. ...

OPPORTUNITY

Hence opportunity to review the language and contents of the rights and freedoms provisions in the Constitution of Cameroon, in the light of day-to-day experiences of people in Cameroon and around the world.

First, the language in which citizen rights and freedoms are expressed in Cameroon’s Constitution. The language embraces understandings that appear both contradictory and complementary. Individual rights and freedoms, as expressed in the Constitution, can be understood as: (a) sacred and inalienable, which no individual may be deprived; and, (b) projected, desires whose achievement may be welcome.

The citizen rights and freedoms, thanks to the language of the Constitution, may thus be interpreted as being situation and context specific, dynamic and/or simply non-existent, regardless of individual and/or collective ability to exercise the rights and freedoms!

Second, the contents of several of the enumerated individual rights and freedoms in the Constitution are subject to conditions determined, or to be fixed, by other laws and/or public policy. This may be construed as authorising other law and public policy agencies to limit or deny constitutionally sanctioned citizen rights and freedoms as they see fit!

It might not surprise, therefore, that despite the growing complexity and sophistication of the State of Cameroon, constitutionally mandated citizen rights and freedoms are abused increasingly, sapping the State’s moral authority and tearing society apart.

CALL OF A NATION

Cameroon today, appears transformed as a country where, for example, access to formal education remains restricted even at the primary level; where inadequate attention is paid to content and quality in education systems, especially with regard to relevance, enrichment and equality; where roads are bad, telephone lines few and access difficult and expensive; where books and other printed materials are difficult to circulate and libraries are few and far between; where people are financially poor and eager to migrate; where corruption is fast becoming the culture for many; where rights are so easily abused and freedom for all remains a far cry!

“Given the rising misery from growing poverty, deprivation and vice in Cameroon”, as e-Citizens Bulletin of January 2005 notes, “there may not be much room left for citizens to live in harmony with their natural resources, traditions and customs that increasingly produce less. Vision and creativity is much in need, in the circumstance, to unlock the prime natural resource of Cameroon – the knowledge base of its people. The people have to be in a position to discuss possible contradictions between belief(s) and (their) effects on the wellbeing of every citizen, and develop understanding in children why and how such ideas became part of culture. Without this, citizens risk carrying on as usual and children risk learning in schools simply to pass exams and keep on acting as it is known outside school.”

New approaches are needed to help citizens of all skill levels, within and across the barriers, to bring about positive development by engaging one another increasingly and continually in efforts to guarantee constitutionally mandated individual rights and freedoms.

To improve individual rights and freedoms security, citizens have to build or renew confidence in their own selves and in one another; find and disseminate information that is relevant to individual rights and freedoms issues; make informed analyses of their own problems and opportunities. Some of the information they need exists in and around them, in their day-to-day experiences. Other knowledge and its operational application skills may, however, be widely dispersed nationally and internationally, needing broad-based collaboration to keep generating virtuous individual rights and freedoms guaranteeing regimes.

EITD RESEARCH PUBLIC POLICY FORUMS

EITD Research Public Policy Forums are designed in response to the foregoing call, as dedicated online meeting platforms where citizens of all skill levels and believes are welcome to discuss individual rights and freedoms issues facing Cameroon and the world. They provide permanent forums for individual rights and freedoms thought that reveals authenticity and/or lack thereof in Cameroon law, public policy development and serve as resource for teachers and students in our various schools, colleges and universities.

It is hoped that this would help clarify: (1) The specific rights and freedoms set forth in the Constitution of Cameroon; (2) Arrangements that were/are in place or being proposed to guarantee the rights and freedoms; (3) How the arrangements have fared, are working or likely to perform or not; and, (4) Reforms that may be needed, when, where, etc. Being clear on these issues will help us all, and future generations.

You are invited to join this endeavour. Explore EITD Research Public Policy Forums. PARTICIPATION IS FREE.