Human rights in Cameroon are addressed in the

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...

. However, the 2009 Human Rights Report by the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

noted concerns in regard to election irregularities, security forces

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. definitions of tortur ...

and arbitrary arrests.
2009 U.S Dept of State Human Rights Report: Cameroon
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Issues

A 2002 report by the UK charity

Freedom from Torture Freedom from Torture (previously known as The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture) is a British registered charity which provides therapeutic care for survivors of torture who seek protection in the UK. Since it was established ...

said that "The prevalence of torture in Cameroon was such as to warrant a country visit from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture in 1999. He described the use of torture in Cameroon as 'widespread and systematic.'" In its 2012 Annual Review,

stated that they had received 33 referrals for torture survivors from Cameroon for clinical treatment or other services. Amnesty International reported concerns about violence by security forces. In 2009, around 100 civilians were killed during demonstrations. In April 2010, Germain Cyrille Ngota Ngota, the editor of the '' Cameroun Express'', died in custody at Kondengui Central Prison. He had been jailed pending trial in February 2010 along with the editors of two other newspapers, for the alleged "joint forgery" of the signature of a presidential official. One of the editors said that the document in question had merely been attached to an interview request, whilst the journalist who had originated the document was on the run. "The Federation of African Journalists after visiting the country described Cameroon in May 2010 as 'one of the worst jailers of journalists in Africa'." As of 2020, Cameroon "currently prosecutes consensual same sex conduct more aggressively than almost any country in the world". On 27 June 2022, the ''

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

'' reported that the armed separatist fighters killed and injured people, raped a girl, and committed other grave human rights abuses across Cameroon’s Anglophone regions. The separatists also burned schools, attacked universities, and kidnapped up to 82 people, with no apparent fear of being held to account by either their own leaders or Cameroonian law enforcement.

Historical situation

The following table gives Cameroon's ratings since 1972 in the

Freedom in the World ''Freedom in the World'' is a yearly survey and report by the U.S.-based non-governmental organization Freedom House that measures the degree of civil liberties and political rights in every nation and significant related and disputed territori ...

reports, published annually by Freedom House. A score of 1 is "most free" and 7 is "least free".

International treaties

Cameroon's stances on international human rights treaties are as follows:

Notes

:1.Note that the "Year" signifies the "Year covered". Therefore the information for the year marked 2008 is from the report published in 2009, and so on. :2.As of January 1. :3.The 1982 report covers the year 1981 and the first half of 1982, and the following 1984 report covers the second half of 1982 and the whole of 1983. In the interest of simplicity, these two aberrant "year and a half" reports have been split into three year-long reports through interpolation.

References

External links