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Global Conscience |
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Forced Evictions in Douala
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Forced Evictions in Douala
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Stop Evictions on Douala Industrial Zones In the days ahead, over eighty families in Douala face eviction from their homes as government plans to take over their land for industrial development. No alternative accommodation or other forms of redress have been put in place for these families. Global Conscience would like to express its concern over these planned forceful evictions of “illegal occupants” of the Bassa and Bonaberi industrial zones in Douala. Wouri SDO, Bernard Atebe has asked the said illegal occupants to justify their tenureship of the land or quit. He said government has reserved the property for industrial purposes since 1971. Forced evictions, according to the UN is the involuntary “removal of individuals families or communities from their homes, land or neighborhoods, against their will…”While it might be viewed as a mere side-effect of development, the outright victimization by the act of forced eviction from one’s home is certainly one of the most supreme injustices any individual or family can face. The said occupants who now face eviction have lived on this land for about thirty years. Global Conscience asks the question; where do these families go now? What school will their children attend? Where will the wives cook and clean? All stages of the eviction process have identifiable human rights implications. The right to adequate housing, which is expressed most notably in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art 25, para 1), includes the right to be protected from forced eviction. When children are unable to attend school due to a forced eviction, the right to education is sacrificed. When people lose their source of employment, the right to work is breached. When families and communities are torn apart from eviction, the right to family life is infringed. When psychological and physical health are damaged by the constant threat of eviction, issues of the right to health are raised. Our expectation, therefore, is the immediate engagement of dialogue with affected individuals and families for relocation, and the payment to the victims of compensations that should leave them in no worse off situation than before the displacement. Global Conscience therefore strongly posits that MAGZI should cause the rich industrialist vying for the land to borne the full cost of the displacements
HE. Mr. Ephraim Inoni Your Excellency We are very disturbed with the situation of the forceful eviction of indigent families from their homes by your government. We read about the forceful eviction in 2006, of about thirty families in Hausa Quarters Kumba. We understand that after pressure from some human rights organisations, the Kumba Urban Council gave the displaced families a little money that could not even move them to their native villages. These families are still wallowing in indescribable misery. The planned evictions in Bassa and Bonaberi in Douala promise more and severe hardship on the victim families. The Cameroon government owes it to her citizens, especially the poor, to provide them with adequate housing, so its quite paradoxical that the same government is responsible for the trauma that these indigent populations are about to face. We suggest that government gets money from the huge industrialists, who in the first place are not suppose to engage in any projects that expose individuals and communities to forced evictions, to construct new and better homes for the victims.
Your
Excellency, thank you in advance for listening to our pleas, and for your
conscionable action to bring relief to these afflicted families. Sincerely yours, Sign
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