Addressing Human Rights Challenges in Cameroon with the Focus on Corruption

Abstract

Corruption compromises governments’ ability to fulfil their obligation to promote, respect, and protect the human rights of individuals within their jurisdictions. Human rights are indivisible and interdependent, and the consequences of corruption are multiple and touch on all human rights; civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; and on the right to development. Up to now, corruption has been largely ignored as a human rights issue. With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, and most notably in this regard, the sustainable development goal number 16, on the increased awareness has spread within the UN system of the detrimental impact of corruption on the enjoyment of human rights. On the economic level, corruption has become the favourite sport of both senior and low-level public servants in Cameroon. It also affects the private sector. It can be considered trivial but it jeopardizes national development and endangers the lives of people as public servants receive kickbacks that affect the building of collective infrastructure: public buildings, bridges and roads, schools, etc. Sometimes, projects are abandoned because of overbilling or under-billing. This kind of situation occurs so often that it does not seem to move the ordinary citizen, the taxpayer whose taxes are being squandered. Other serious crimes that are often ignored are treason and discrimination in every possible form. The time has thus come to put an end to these criminal actions jeopardizing liberties in a State governed by the rule of law. This paper aims to strengthen the role of governments in the fight against corruption, through, inter alia, delivering objective, fact-based statistical research on the nature and extent of the impact of corruption on human rights; reflecting on the Cameroonian situation. The paper also envisaged to provide insight and counsel on the potential establishment of new types of mechanisms within the UN human rights mechanisms to support States in combating corruption.