Cameroon will no longer benefit from a trade pact between the US and sub-Saharan African countries because of “gross” human rights violations against its own citizens, US President Donald Trump says.
President Trump cited “extrajudicial killings, arbitrary and unlawful detention, and torture” in his statement issued on Thursday, adding that Cameroon will be officially excluded from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) on 1 Jan.
Some 3,000 people have been killed in violence in Cameroon’s Anglophone region over the past three years, according to a group of 65 civil society organisations who this week called on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to address violations in the country.
The group states that about half a million people have been forced to flee their homes, and 700,000 children are out of school.