Refugee Life In Cameroon
This article is the first in a series. Though not representative of a particular group or community, it will present moments of daily refugee life in Cameroon. The author, Nestor Nga Etoga, based in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, is a professional journalist, volunteering for RESPECT. He offers a look at issues faced by the urban refugees he meets.
Together, the Cameroon Red Cross (CRC) and the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees (UNHCR) offer assistance to refugees in diverse fields such as education, health, and social assistance. In theory, services should also be extended to asylum seekers (refugees waiting for regular papers). Yet, most of them struggle to survive in precarious conditions.
Two types of aid are granted for education. First, scholarships are given for graduate academic, technical, or vocational studies at universities, colleges, African Computer Institute (Institut Africain d'Informatique), French Driving School (Auto-École Française), Hotel Business Vocational Training Center (Centre de Formation Pratique en Hôtellerie), for example with whom there are partnerships.
Secondly, some refugees can obtain support to pay for primary school tuition. Regarding information taken in the documentation center, the German Government offers scholarships for graduate studies as well.
As for health, in an interview, Hervé Moudourou, Executive Officer of CRC-UNHCR project, said that for 300 CFA francs ($0.55 USD or €0.46 EUR), refugees can receive medical care, screening, and medications at the Medical Center Henri Dunant.
The CRC-UNHCR offers also a minimum income for insertion (revenu minimum d'insertion) of 25,000 CFA francs ($46 USD or €38 EUR) per month comprising familial allowance, medical assistance, and training tuition to help individuals find a job or set up a microproject. Even though there are a large number of refugees, few are able to benefit from this support.
The protection, last part of the project, consists mainly of delivering and renewing official papers when file pieces are lost, or when teens reach adulthood, for travel purpose or other reasons.
As I couldn't obtain an appointment with any CRC or CRC-UNHCR project members, I decided to investigate at the organization's national headquarters in Yaounde in order to gather testimonies that would highlight the way it is run and which assistance is offered to the refugees.
Refugees wait outside the Cameroon Red Cross (CRC) building for appointments.
The main gate, protected by some robust vigils from DAK Security Agency, makes me think to a refugee camp. A crowd of women, children, and men of all ages, sometimes laid on the floor, is waiting all day long to obtain an appointment with one of the Cameroon Urban Refugee Assistance officers. The uninterrupted flow of refugees looks like people strolling in Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. Congolese, Rwandese, Ivory Coast people, Chadian, Burundi people, Liberian, Sudanese, Sierra Leone people, etc. They have a ruddy complexion due to their frequent trips through Africa.
Among them, Matundu Sita, 43 years old, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is part of the so-called wandering people who complain every day about diverse abuses they are victim of. Matundu Sita arrived in Cameroon in October 1984. He left his native village (Matidi) in the Bas-Congo to flee the former President Mobutu Sese Seko's dictatorship. Matundu Sita explained:
"I arrived in Cameroon by chance. I left my country because I wasn't satisfied under Mobutu era, with the dictatorship, the arrests on the road, we were even asked [for] baptism ID cards. I wasn't comfortable. I don't like to live where there is too much trauma."
He has been in Cameroon for 21 years. He left Kinshasa, traveling by boat; he crossed Bangui, Central African Republic, where he went to the UNHCR office.
"In Bangui, I was lucky to obtain the refugee attestation. From there, a brother suggested to go on the road together and before coming back to Bangui and then to Yaounde, here, he wanted to play some musical concerts with me."
Then, by boat, Matundu Sita arrived in Cameroon.
"But the reality wasn't the promise land we heard about, it was rather the contrary. The refugee attestation I had, a brother advised me to keep it for a moment. I mustn't use it because, at that moment, Mobutu was influent[ial] on the African family. Especially us, we are from central Africa. Mobutu was loved to stand for his opinion. To be a refugee was a little bit hard. My brother, to whom I give my papers for a moment, vanished with them. Last news I heard about him were that he is in Europe. No matter what, I asked more than three times for a new attestation to the Cameroon Red Cross-UNHCR but it is useless. They told me to go back to Bangui."
Bosco Fayette, a refugee from the Ivory Coast, aged 35, arrived in Yaounde on September 12, 2005. He wanders all day long in the CRC-UNHCR front yard. Distressed, he shouts towards passersby, vigils, and officers. He reaches out his hand to beg for coins, a little money to eat, to drink, to sleep. He says:
"Since I arrived here, I observed they can give you an appointment and never come. Sometimes, they throw you out more than five times. There is too much laxity. Officers and executives are too much avid. They even don't care about us. The guy who comes to hand out the photocopies used to request an appointment asks 50 CFA francs ($0.09 USD or €0.07 EUR) in exchange."
The types of aid offered by the CRC-UNHCR seems to be unknown by most of the refugees, at least the ones I met. There is dissatisfaction and protest. It is said that last June, some people mobbed the UNHCR and CRC buildings. Protest walks were organized through Yaounde streets to call on the United Nations to intervene on behalf of refugees in Cameroon.
Partly thanks to the refugee protest movement, collective micro-projects can now also receive support.
According to an article (in French only) published on the InterPress Service News Agency website, complaints have been received about extortion practices, illegal business, and even sexual abuses during the refugee attestation approval process. CRC-UNHCR executives are denying these allegations. Police investigate but, so far, nobody has been convicted.
These allegations may only be rumors. However, the wandering people express their need to be supported and recognized. Humanitarian and assistance organizations such as the Red Cross and the UNHCR are more than necessary to meet the refugee needs in Yaounde and in the rest of the country.