Villagers from Belo, in Cameroon’s north-west, flee to nearby Bamenda. Photograph: Peter Zongo

Is there future for Cameroonian children?

The seven-year-old Simon and his mother along with his two younger siblings have lived in fear, fleeing the violence that has attacked Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions. Simon and his family fled their home in Batibo and they walk across an open jungle, swapping home for a camp in the bush with no clean water nor food and medicines.

Yet, it has been another year that school has been suspended. Simon and tens of thousands of other Cameroonian children will not be telling any holiday stories but carrying sack and carpet used for sleeping.

The situation in Cameroon is recently out of control with a vicious war of kidnapping and the burning of the entire village. It is mandatory for Cameroonian children to attend school until the age of 12, but gunshots on the streets mean as denial for this right.

Teachers who dared to show up for work have been killed and the school buildings are burned down. Recently this week, a group of unknown men attacked a school in Buea with machetes and guns. Back then on the first day of the academic year, gunmen attacked a school in Bafut, kidnapping five pupils.

UN children’s agency in Cameroon, as a representative from UNICEF, Jacques Boyer said that all children in the north-west and south-west regions must be able to go to school like any other children in the world. However, UNICEF is not providing any educational support for the affected regions and are being left on their own.

Bridget, a 50-year-old retired nurse from the north-west is now worried about what will happen to the children in the future, the children will become a terror group fighting the government. Such fears have come to a reality where Claire, 38, from north-west region says she used to see children in her church but now they run around the neighborhood carrying guns.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/sep/21/imagine-in-five-years-how-education-became-a-casualty-of-cameroon-war