WUNRN
Climbing
Hills of Injustice in North-West Cameroon – Rahamatu - The Mbororo-Fulani
GENEVA, July 2007 - Rahamatu Mallam Sali comes from a
Mbororo-Fulani community in North-West Cameroon . Since their arrival from the
Adamawa Plateau region in West-Central Africa at the end of the nineteenth
century, these pastoralists have suffered considerable human rights violations.
Rahamatu is part of a new generation of Mbororo-Fulani who want to bring about
change in their community.
In this
Central African nation made up of 281 ethnic groups, only two tribes are recognized
as indigenous: Rahamatu's tribe and the Mbaka Pygmies in the South. The
Mbororo-Fulani represent an estimated 13 per cent of the general population
with 2 million people dispersed on hilltops in remote areas of most of the
country. This semi-nomadic people are becoming more and more sedentary, with a
tendency to regroup into larger settlements.
Rahmatu is
part of the first generation of Mbororo-Fulani women to benefit from formal
education up to the higher level. As such, she feels it is her duty to help her
community. “For generations [the Mbororo-Fulani] have resisted anything
perceived as a threat to their cattle herding style. I consider myself very
fortunate to serve as a role model for my community”, she says.
Illiteracy
and human rights abuses are some of the biggest challenges her community still
faces. Ninety-eight per cent of Mbororo-Fulanis are illiterate. Their
centuries-old way of life has never been accepted by their fellow countrymen.
Discrimination, exclusion and extortion are common.
Despite their newly
adopted sedentary lifestyle, the Mbororo have no rights over the lands in which
their cattle graze; as a result, there are frequent evictions. Grazing lands
are often seized by neighbouring farmers or wealthy individuals. According to
Rahamatu, 91 displaced Mbororo families have lost 20,000 hectares of land.
Rahamatu
hopes the training she is receiving today through the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Indigenous Fellowship Programme will give her
a better understanding of mechanisms that will help best protect her
community's rights, and give her more skills to lobby and advocate for the
rights of indigenous men and women in her country. She also realises now the
great role non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can play.
Back home,
even with the scarce knowledge she already had of these issues, Rahamatu chose
to tackle the problems her community faced by joining in 2002 the Mbororo Social
and Cultural Development Association (MBOSCUDA), a community based NGO created
by local youths primarily to help the marginalised Mbororo-Fulanis gain access
to the justice system. Soon after, the organisation focused on fighting
illiteracy by creating an education programme for adults, building schools and
sponsoring students thanks to funding from the NGO Village Aid UK .
For
Rahamatu, “The issues of inequality and injustice in Mbororo communities is
primarily because of their lack of education, effectively denying them access
to what is a key socializing process in any society”. So far, more than 250
students have been sponsored by MBOSCUDA to complete their education up to
college.
Born from an
illiterate mother, she feels it is important to give Mbororo-Fulani women more
autonomy. She received her primary and high-school education from her father, a
court clerk, and her community association later helped her continue her
studies. “We've run an adult literacy programme for over 700 women” she says, “Through
our gender and women's promotion programme, which I manage, we train women and
provide them with interest-free micro credit loans to help them reduce their
dependency on men”.
With her new
acquired knowledge, Rahamatu plans to organise a training programme for members
of her association back home similar to the one she received at OHCHR
Headquarters in Geneva . She also plans to contact other UN entities working on
the ground in Cameroon to seek future areas of collaboration.
================================================================
To leave the list, send your request by email to: wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com.
Thank you.