As the world observes the 2021 International Day of Peace, Reach Out has called on Cameroonians to give peace a chance.

The non-governmental organisation (NGO) operates in Cameroon’s southwest and northwest areas, where fighting between government security forces and armed groups has lingered for the past three years.

Cameroon’s northwest and southwest regions have been rocked by violence after separatists declared the independence of ‘Ambazonia’.

The crisis, which has led to more than 3,000 deaths, started when lawyers and teachers took to the streets of Buea and Bamenda to protest the domination of French in Anglophone courts and schools.

At a rally organised by the NGO, thousands of Cameroonians called for a ceasefire between the military and separatists.

Citizens who marched in several cities and towns said they were tired of burying civilians caught up in the fighting.

‘It is our collective responsibility to be peace mediators wherever we find ourselves in our various communities, and we are calling on our government to receive the message, the call for peace with an open heart’, Director of the NGO, Esther Omam, said.

‘Same as we are saying that please, the non-state armed groups receive our call for peace with an open heart. This is the time for appeasement’.

Similar peace walks took place in Buea, Bamenda and Kumba, all cities in western regions, and the northern towns of Maroua, Garoua and Ngaoundere.

Omam said silencing the guns is the only way the lives of civilians, government troops, jihadist and separatist fighters can be spared from either wounds or dying.

Cameroon’s Minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Marie-Therese Abena Ondoa, said the military ordered by the government to protect civilians can not drop weapons.

‘I am begging that our children, our young brothers, our sisters who are in the bush exerting or preparing to come and exert violence should give up violence, leave the bush because we have all become beggars of peace’, she said.

The West African Civil Society Institute (WACSI) had advised the government of Cameroon to consider a well-structured dialogue with the people of its Anglophone regions.

In a report, The Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon and the imperative of the Cohabitation Pact: Building Peace from the ‘Great National Dialogue’, WACSI urged the government to uphold truth as a precondition for reconciliation.

Source: VOA

Photo source: Reach Out