Stakeholders Brainstorm On Migration Strategy

Members of the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms (NCHRF), representatives of government ministries and civil society organisations, as well as staff of the commission on May 7, 2013 in Yaounde brainstormed on the national strategy

related to handling migration issues and also on the creation of a multi-sector network to work in the same domain.

Justifying the holding of the workshop, the Secretary General of the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms, Barthelemy Obongono Eye'e, said globalisation of exchanges have raised diverse perceptions and socio-economic, cultural and security problems. However, migration, he said, was also beneficial to the migrants, their places of origin and the host community. The migrants have rights that have to be promoted and protected.

Cameroon, owing to its position as a transit country and political stability is home to hundreds of immigrants. The Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in a report in 2010 disclosed that international immigrants in Cameroon were estimated at 196,000 people, representing over one per cent of the country's population.

The educative workshop was therefore to also enable stakeholders master the situation and cause the country to implement national and international instruments related to migration issues.