Le régime juridique des étrangers au Cameroun

SECTION 2 - FOREIGNERS A EXCEPTIONAL STATUTE

As considering previously, they are the most vulnerable people that the international law wanted to protect by specific conventions, with knowing, the Convention of Geneva of 1951 and that of the OAU of 1969 who protect the refugee owing to the fact that « he is private in fact or in right of the support of his government »^133(*) as well as the Convention on the statute of the stateless people^134(*). Unfortunately, these Conventions are perpetually violated in Cameroun  because the refugee encounters precise difficulties (Paragraph 1) and the stateless person is exposed to a treatment even more inhuman (paragraph 2).

Paragraph 1 - Problems of the rights of the refugee

The protection of the refugees falls initially on the government of the host country which must conform to the provisions of relating to it Conventions. But several examples show that it of it is nothing in Cameroun (A). In the second place, the HCR, while taking care that the State respects its engagements, must make it possible to the refugees to begin a new life^135(*). The practice reveals that that is extremely ambiguous (B).

A) Government bonds

The Convention of Geneva of 1951 leaves freedom to each State to establish the procedures of recognition of the quality of refugee. As considering previously, in 2004, Cameroun granted the statute of refugee to sixty thousand people and six thousand applicants of asylum are on standby^136(*). We note, moreover, an increase in this number. Indeed, At December 31, 1999, 49.940 refugees and 740 applicants of asylum resided on the own territory^137(*). With the reading of article 2 (6) of the Convention of the above mentioned OAU of 1969, one can note that the safety of the refugees falls on the governments hosts because it is on their territory that they live^138(*).

However it appears that this Convention is not scrupulously applied by Cameroun. Indeed, twelve refugees of Guinea Equatoriale stopped in September 1997 are remained all the year in detention in spite of the efforts of the HCR to reinstall them in a third country. In April, Amnesty International again requested the authorities not to repatriate of force the nationals emprisonnéscar^139(*) the international law qualifies these practices of illicit repatriations.

In addition, the refugees have more and more problems^140(*) among which we can quote confusion on the crucial questions of their naturalization and a right of access to the land title. They are also the difficulties of access to education, health, employment like with all the other basic rights. We make a point of specifying that according to a survey carried out in January 2000, 48% of the urban refugees residing in Yaounde declared being victims of stigmatization and discrimination on behalf of the populations and the looking after personnel of the medical establishments because of their foreign origin and their state of seropositivity. They were also victims of forced repatriations and enrôlement « manu militari ». These immigrants complained, moreover, of the Chadian child work taken refuge in the plantations in the North of the country. They affirmed being victims of the arbitrary arrests and would undergo blows, wounds and other forms of tortures in the prisons. In addition, this investigation reveals that the prison authorities did not provide any reason for these arrests. It prevented the refugees held and imprisoned to communicate with outside like resorting to the services of a lawyer, an interpreter and a doctor. Moreover, they had difficulties in carrying felt sorry for against the police officers because, it always followed of the reprisals and illegal expulsions.

The State tends to legitimate illegal expulsions of the refugees, as well as the other forms of violations of their basic rights, whereas the African Commission of the humans right and of the people prohibited in Communications 27/89, 46/91 and 99/93 (world Organization against the torture and the International association of the democratic lawyers, international Commission of lawyers (CIJ), world Organization against torture (OMCT) and Union interafricaine of the humans right against Rwanda)^141(*). Considering the diversity of these violations, how one would not speak about « setting as a fourrière » of the rights of the refugee  in Cameroun? Indeed, this one fled persecution in its country and is still confronted with persecution in the territory of asylum.

Nevertheless, it is important to raise two positive actions, posed by the State. Initially, we will not fail to point out a success of the right Cameronian extraditionnel. It is about the refusal of the State to extradite eight political refugees in Rwanda the shortly after the genocide of April 1994. Indeed, the Court of Appeal of the Center estimated that the refugees were likely to be subjected to torture^142(*). In the second place, we note a certain virtual evolution of the national law relating to protection from these abroad bus as of July 2005, the French National Assembly started to study a bill carrying statute of the refugee in Cameroun^143(*). It specifies that the refugees remaining on the territory will be able from now on to assert « all basic rights and provisions envisaged with the chapters II, III, IV and V of Conventions of Geneva of 1951 and the OAU of 1969 relating to the refugees, within the limit of the rights granted to the nationals ». It is the demonstration of a real official awakening by the government vis-a-vis the problems encountered by the refugees.

Nevertheless, they still live under the weight of many evils. We notice, moreover, that this phenomenon also exists in the majority of the countries of Africa. As example, the situation of the refugees in Burkina-Faso^144(*) also leaves something to be desired since the closing of the office of the HCR in 2001.

This with thus saying is that the problem of the refugees is not reduced to the level of the State ? In other words, isn't the HCR also responsible for certain attacks to their rights?

* ¹³³ SOLOMON (Robert), refugees, Vendôme, PUF, 1963, p.8.

* ¹³⁴ We make a point of recalling that under the terms of article 1(a) (2) of the Convention of Geneva of 1951, article 1 (2) of his Protocol of 1967 and of article 1 (1) of the Convention of the OAU of 1969, a stateless person who feels persecuted in the country where it had his usual residence also profits from the quality of refugee. He is a stateless person-refugee also protected by the texts applicable to the ordinary refugee, as well as this last. However the legal condition of the strict stateless person to the direction of the term is guaranteed by the Convention on the statute of the stateless people.

* ¹³⁵ UNHCR, Refugees, Volume 2, Number 123, Milan, Service of the information of the HCR, 2001, p16.

* ¹³⁶ Cf First Part, Chapter 1.

* ¹³⁷ Office of the High Commission of the United Nations for the Refugees, the refugees in the world  : fifty years of humane action, Paris, Otherwise, 2000, pp.306-309 and pp.311-313.

* ¹³⁸ Office of the High Commission of the United Nations for the Refugees, the refugees in the world..., COp Cit, pp.248-249.

* ¹³⁹ Amnesty International, Report/ratio 99, London, EFAI, 1999, p.216.

* ¹⁴⁰ See Cameronian Review of press the Messenger and NTIGA (Leger), June 20, 2004 (world day of the refugees).

* ¹⁴¹ Institute for the humans right and the development, COp Cit, pp.330-335.

* ¹⁴² Decision of the Court of Appeal of the Center, IN  N°337 business/HORN, February 21, 1997, Yaounde, Cameroun.

* ¹⁴³ See Cameronian Review of press the Messenger and NDONG (Thierry), «  Refugees in Cameroun  : better days take shape  », Douala, July 7, 2005. ( http://fr.allafrica.com/stories/200507070896.html).

* ¹⁴⁴ To consult  the Situation report on the human rights to Burkina-Faso - period 1996-2002, S.V., burkinabé Movement of the humans right and of people (MBDHP), 2002, pp.76-79.