The major purpose of this Guidebook is to cover the activities of a three-day workshop on strengthening the institutions of 30 human rights organizations based in the South West and North West regions of Cameroon to Monitor, Document and Report (MDR process) human rights violations.
Violations of human rights are major challenges confronting the Cameroonian nation. These violations come in many forms including torture, domestic violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual assault, land theft, girl trafficking, adultery, arson, extra-judicial killings, female genital mutilation, breast ironing among others. An increase in violent conflict and the instability that it creates is often linked to an increase in violations of human rights.
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Presently Cameroon faces several destabilizing factors including the Boko Haram crisis in the North region, the refugee influx in the East region from Central African Republic, but most especially, the protracted insurgency in the South West and North West regions. But beyond this big picture of political human rights situation in the South West and North West regions lie an avalanche of socio-economic and cultural violations that sometimes does not have much attention and visibility.
Human rights defenders are working across the country to prevent and seek justice for these violations; however, they face many challenges including a lack of resources, skills, and cooperation from authorities. National and international human rights groups, including government institutions like the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms (NCHRF) rely on local human rights monitors for reliable information and reports that stir debate on policy changes and encourage better enforcement and protection of human rights.
In most cases however this role has been taken by media practitioners who sometimes rely on sensational information, unscientific research and lack of evidence-based documentation to report on human rights violations. It is therefore imperative that more grassroots human rights advocates are trained to map, monitor, document, and report human rights violations of all forms especially in the South West and North West regions of Cameroon.
The development of this Guidebook is inspired by work carried out in 2014 by Search For Common Ground organisation in Nigeria. Hence the main thrust of the MDR narrative on the inner pages is a replication that was largely contextualised by one of our Facilitators Barrister Ivo Njuh Alou. Barrister Enow Benjamin set the scene of workshop; Barrister Deborah Itoe talked the participants through Gender-based violence and the innovation on MDR process was the commitment of participants to develop a web as a tool for the MDR process thanks to the presentation of Award-winning Journalist Eugene Nforngwa.
The participants have already established a Coalition through a whatsApp group called MDR Forum. They had earlier identified some of the recurrent human rights violations as seen on some of the pages. Now it is for them to monitor, document and post human rights violations (potential or prevalent) within their locality onto the website.
We owe the Canada Fund for Local initiatives overwhelming gratitude for supporting this project.
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