Reduced Inequalities

Photo: Avenue des Cocotiers, Douala, the largest city in Cameroon and its economic capital. The city is primarily francophone. Credit: Kayhan ERTUGRUL | Wikimedia Commons.

Cameroon’s Catholic Bishops Fail to See Eye to Eye on ‘Anglophone Problem’

By Ngala Killian Chimtom

YAOUNDE (IDN) – “It was like I was watching a horror movie” is how the bishop of Mamfe diocese in Cameroon’s South West Region described the scene he saw in the village of Kembong village.

Mgr Andrew Nkea had visited the village in the wake of the deaths of four soldiers late December, killed by unknown assailants (although the government claimed they were secessionists). In a retaliatory move, Cameroonian soldiers had incinerated the whole village.

“I saw more than 20 houses burnt down by soldiers and one dead body still lying there, being fed on by dogs and chicken,” said Nkea. Of the village’s 5,000 or so residents, only 30 remained, all huddled in the house of the area’s priest because “they had nowhere else to go.”

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 10 January 2018

UN Expert Reveals Shocking Facts about Poverty in the U.S.

By J C Suresh

TORONTO (IDN) – More than one in every eight Americans, numbering 40 million, equal to 12.7 % of the population, are living in poverty, and almost half of those – 18.5 million – in abysmal poverty, according to a new report.

Though the United States is one of the world’s richest, most powerful and technologically innovative countries, "neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation," stresses Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in his statement on a two-week visit to the USA.

Alston, an international law scholar and human rights practitioner, is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and co-Chair of the law school's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

: J C Suresh; THE WORLD; USA and Canada; 25 December 2017

COP23 Finally Provides a Platform for Indigenous People on Climate Talks

By Stella Paul

BONN (IDN) – Patricia Gualinga has been coming to the UN climate change conferences for several years. She usually receives 2-3 minutes on a panel of a side event on indigenous issues during which she tells about the struggles of her community – the Kichwas of Ecuador.

The struggles are, typically, of surviving in an environment where water is fast depleting, air is polluted, land is taken away and tribe members are evicted from their homes – all in the name of development. Sarayaku – where Gualinga comes from – is an Amazonian province in which the degradation is often caused by large oil explorers.