Rri-Cameroon advocates for indigenous peoples' rights

Rri-Cameroon coalition organised its tenure for a week during which it demonstrated the need to take into account the rights of indigenous peoples in the various ongoing reforms.

The first edition of the week of the tenure was organized in Yaoundé from 29 September to 1 October 2014. The initiative was called coalition Initiative on rights and resources (Rri), which includes about fifteen non-governmental organizations. Participants in this work focused mainly on issues of respect for the human rights of local and indigenous populations in Cameroon.

Thus, various socio-professional strata were contribution to revisit the ongoing reforms in the Cameroonian Government in the management of federal heritage, and of course proposals.

Overall, participants in the work during the week of tenure retain the need to recognize the indigenous peoples. One of the arguments is that the Earth is not only highlighted by agriculture and any other form approved by the administration.

This basis should be part of the measures to take into account in the design and implementation of major development projects. This, one must add the specificity of the villages of indigenous peoples, in this case the Baka (Pygmies) and the Bororo, whose structures are very different from that of other peoples. The solution is to recognize them (which is not always the case) and to adapt them to the overall operation.

One of the solutions in this sense would be, according to Samuel Nguiffo, Executive Secretary of the Centre for environment and development (Ced), the implementation of participatory mapping. It is, he says, a concept which demands the State services to greatly involve people at the base, so that their rights are taken into account.

Civil society also offered other avenues to solve perennial way the problem of the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples in State management. Proposed as a last link of territorial administration, in the ongoing decentralization process; recognition to these villages the right of ownership of their land on the national territory; that is valid recognition of customary law in the search for solutions with regard to land disputes.

It is also recommended to emerge with clarity the role and the place of Chief in the resolution of land issues, as well as the recognition of land rights to women and disadvantaged social strata; women, youth and persons with disabilities.