Southern Cameroons

That this House considers the genocide and abuse of human rights in the war between Cameroon’s authoritarian government and liberation fighters in Southern Cameroons, also known as Ambazonia, as an international atrocity; laments that, since violence began in 2017, 35,000 have been killed, 500 villages have been burnt, over a million children have been deprived education, more than half a million people have become refugees, with more than 1.5 million people internally displaced; notes that Genocide Watch has described the situation as an extermination, and Human Rights Watch have documented how armed groups and government forces have committed widespread human rights abuses, including extrajudicial executions and mass killings; believes that the history of Southern Cameroons is inseparable from the history of violent imperialism and that, as much of the current dispute stems from the British Empire’s refusal to grant independence to the Anglophone region of Southern Cameroons in 1961, the UK is complicit in this present day suffering; holds that the Government has a moral duty to act to end the suffering; further notes that the UK military has been providing military training to Cameroon's Battalion d’Intervention Rapide in Salak at a cost of £1.365 million during the last financial year, and that the UK is building a bespoke military skills facility in Yaounde; and calls on the Government to mediate a ceasefire, reverse the cuts to development funding, abandon its hostile environment for refugees and asylum seekers fleeing the conflict, and increase humanitarian aid to the region.