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Cameroon Teens Urge Education for Peers in Separatist Crisis Areas

Moki Edwin Kindzeka

   YAOUNDE - In Cameroon, thousands of children who fled the country's
   separatist conflict in western regions are marking the International
   Day of the African Child, which underscores the right to education.
   Schools in French-speaking regions hosting the children are calling for
   peace so that schools closed in the troubled English-speaking regions
   can be reopened. But peace is elusive after four years of fighting.
   Treasure Fomunyuy, a 13-year-old who escaped from Cameroon's
   English-speaking northwestern town of Kumbo a year ago after his school
   was torched by armed men, has joined 300 other school children at the
   Etoug Ebe government school in Yaounde to ask for closed schools in the
   English-speaking North West and South West regions to be reopened.
   Fomonyuy said he does not want his peers to continue to be deprived of
   education.
   "I stayed in the house for three years without going to school. I do
   not want my brothers and sisters who are in the North West and South
   West to be stopped from going to school. Many of them want to be
   doctors, teachers and presidents," he said.
   Fomonyuy lives with his uncle, who has agreed to pay his fees. He said
   many children lack the opportunity he has.

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