Friday, February fourteenth, the UN says at least 22 people have been killed in a village in the Northwest region of Cameroon. Over half of those killed were children. No one has claimed responsibility for Friday’s incident but the opposition parties blame the killing on the government.
Cameroon aims to stop trafficking of young women to Women to Middle East
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Cameroon's government is working to stop the trafficking of young women to the Middle East. The government says hundreds of women and girls have been lured to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and other countries in the past five years.
Several students stand
at the entrance to the University of Yaounde. They read posters advertising
jobs in Kuwait, Qatar, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. The ads promise
monthly salaries of up to $700.
"If I work for a
year, I will be able to save 3.6 million francs so I am ready to sacrifice five
years before I return to create a business back here," said Carole
Yemngang, a 19-year-old student. "Why should I continue with my studies
when thousands of others graduate and are never recruited?"
VOA called the number
listed on a poster offering jobs of sales agents, nurses and teachers.
"Everybody who
comes will never regret because the opportunities are good…”
The man declined to give
his name. VOA went to the address he indicated but was told the company had
moved.
Police said the phone
number belongs to a Cameroonian under investigation as a middle man for
traffickers.
Many of the women go to
Kuwait, like 30-year-old Pauline Manyi.
She says her father had
died and she was looking for a better life, an adventure. She says she was told
Arabs needed translators from the English to the French and vice versa.
Instead she says her
passport was taken and she was sold to a family where she was raped and forced
to do housework.
Another woman,
24-year-old Kebam Eucharia, just returned to Cameroon in April.
She says her family had
borrowed money to send her to Kuwait to work but she was sold to a man at the
airport when she arrived.
“I had no rest, working
round the clock," ssaid Eucharia. "I will finish work around 3
o'clock in the night. There is no food. Then the next morning, they come and
wake me up at six o'clock. They say yela, get up. Start your work. The only
thing they give you as food is one of their bread and a small cup of tea. That
is it for the whole day.”
Both women escaped and
made it to the embassy of the Central African Republic in Kuwait City to phone
their families.
In April, Cameroon
appointed its first ever ambassador to Kuwait and Qatar and announced that it
will soon open its own embassy in Kuwait City. Families of trafficked women
told VOA they hope the diplomatic presence will make it easier to intervene.
Lawmakers and
journalists brought the matter up with a Kuwaiti parliamentary delegation that
visited Yaounde in March. The delegation said they would investigate but that
it was not the purpose of their visit.
Cameroonian airport
authorities now screen women and girls heading to the Middle East.
Francisca Awah is
president of the Association Against Human Trafficking.
"Since they have
blocked the girls from going to Kuwait from all international airports in
Cameroon, they pass through Nigeria to go to Kuwait. So that is the new means.
They are still going and most of them go there to be prostitutes," Awah
said.
Awah and other survivors
give talks at schools and universities warning of the dangers of trafficking.
They told their stories on state radio and television April 21st.
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