CAMEROON: Children's Rights in the UN Special Procedures' Reports

Summary: This report extracts mentions of children's rights issues in the reports of the UN Special Procedures. This does not include reports of child specific Special Procedures, such as the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, which are available as separate reports.

Please note that the language may have been edited in places for the purpose of clarity.

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• Special Rapporteur on the right to food
• Requested visits
• Agreed visits
• Special Rapporteur on civil and political rights, including questions of torture and detention

Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter

(A/HRC/22/50/Add.2)

Country visit: 16 to 23 July 2012
Report published: 18 December 2012

• II. Food insecurity - A. The general situation:
• Approximately 33 per cent of children suffer from chronic malnutrition, which seriously hinders their growth and development. The situation is particularly serious in rural areas: 20 per cent of children in rural areas are underweight, as compared to 7 per cent of children in urban areas. There are also wide regional disparities. Food insecurity rates range between 17.9 per cent and 15.4 per cent in the Far North and North regions and 0.7 per cent and 2.0 per cent in the South- West and North-West regions. (para 6)

• B. Situation in the northern regions:
• The Special Rapporteur welcomes these initiatives. However, during his meeting in Maroua with members of the humanitarian cluster that includes representatives of the [...] United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) [...] and that was conducting a humanitarian operation to help households in areas affected by the drought, he was struck by the limited capacity of these structures and the lack of resources at their disposal to deal with the humanitarian crisis.

• IV. Elements of the right to food - B. Accessibility - Physical and economic accessibility of food:
• Today, the vast majority of workers in Cameroon are employed in the informal economy and do not benefit from any form of social protection. Similarly, those who are not economically active or who are excluded from the labour market are not covered. The International Labour Organization has calculated that the establishment of a social protection floor in Cameroon (providing the entire population with access to an old-age pension, sickness and disability insurance, a family allowance to offset some of the costs of children’s education and health insurance, and providing unemployment insurance for the entire labour force) would cost less than 6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. (para 40)

Requested visits

(R in 30 Jun 2010) IE on water and sanitation
(R 04/02/2011) SR on food

Agreed visits

(A) SR on freedom of expression (Request to postpone until late 2009 or early 2010)
(A) IE on minority issues (Dates to be agreed)

UN Special Rapporteur on civil and political rights, including questions of torture and detention, Sir Nigel Rodley

(E/CN.4/2000/9/Add.2)

Country visit: 12-20 May 1999
Report published: 11 November 1999

Sir. Rodley identified the following concerns:

• Ill-treatment in police custody: Women, children and elderly people under arrest are reported to be subjected to ill-treatment. (paragraph 5)

  There is a lack of resources allocated to the police in order to provide food and medical car for people in custody, particularly street children and individuals without relatives in the town of detention. (paragraph 9)

• Detention conditions: At one centre, the Special Rapporteur's team saw a young-looking detainee, his hands protected by plastic bags, emptying excrement from the latrines through a hole in the top of the outside wall. (paragraph 8)

  The separation of minors from adult detainees. At the Bamenda criminal investigation service unit, a very young-looking detainee among the adults said that he was 14 years old; the officer in charge of the centre later denied this, but was unable to prove his claim. The women's section contained 27 prisoners, including six minors. The team also saw a mother sleeping with her nine-month-old child on a straw mattress in the entrance lobby of a police station. The guards said that the infant had been with her when she was arrested and that she had been unable to arrange for its care. (paragraph 10)

• Violent treatment: The Special Rapporteur visited the minors' section of the New Bell prison in central Douala, which housed 42 children, but only 22 beds. The youngest child said that he was 12 years old and had been hit on the head with a machete at the police station where he had been questioned. He had a recent scar on the top of his head. Most of the minors interviewed had been arrested for theft and said that they had signed statements after being hit with machetes or lashes or being threatened. (paragraphs 29, 30)

  At Kondengai prison minors are looked after by adults who, on the governor's instructions, apply strict discipline to re-educate them. (paragraph 33)

• Sexual abuse: In the central prisons of Douala and Yaoundé, NGOs reported that minors are subjected to sexual abuse by guards and forced to carry out other prisoners' chores under threat of beatings. Article 29 of the Cameroonian Penal Code, however, that under-18s should serve custodial sentences in special establishments. (paragraph 25)

• Medical care: In the New Bell prison in central Douala, the governor confirmed that the prison only had a budget for medicine, not for sending prisoners to hospital. A child thought to be suffering from tuberculosis had died that morning. The Special Rapporteur also visited Bafoussam where some prisoners were receiving medical care. In one of the wards, prisoners, including a 16-year-old were chained to their own beds (paragraph 28)