Buea Rural Council Assist the Underprivileged
Beneficiary of Buea Council Scholarship
CCDHR lauds the effort of the Buea Rural Council for coming to the support of the blind, the poor, and the underprivileged within the Buea municipality. The Buea City Council Scholarship for the Underprivileged is administered by the Buea city council in partnership with Fako indigenes living in the United States of America. CCDHR considers the relationship between the two positive and humanitarian.

The deteriorating economic situation in Cameroon has led to an increase in the number of school drop outs, with the impact highest amongst the poor and orphans who are least able to pay school fees or afford school needs. By creating a fund specifically aimed at assisting the blind, the poor, and the underprivileged go to school, the Buea Council, under the leadership of Mayor Charles Mbella Moki is setting a good precedent which other councils and privileged Cameroonians should follow.

CCDHR would like to draw attention to the fact the poor, the disabled, and the underprivileged, have the same fundamental rights as their fellow-citizens, which implies first and foremost the right to enjoy a decent life, as normal and full as possible. They have the inherent rights to respect for their human dignity, the right to education, and are entitled to measures designed to enable them to become as self-reliant as possible. Providing mechanisms whereby the poor, disabled, and underprivileged can afford to go to school is therefore a laudable effort on the part of the Buea Rural Council.

CCDHR also calls on the council and donors to avoid selection criteria that could be construed as discriminatory. CCDHR therefore seeks a commitment from the Buea Council to continue to administer the Buea Council Scholarship for the Underprivileged without distinction or discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, sex, language, religion persuasion, political ideology, or any other discriminatory practices applying either to the student or to his or her family.

The Cameroon government has the primary obligation to its people and under international declarations and duly ratified conventions to progressively take steps to provide educational to all its citizens. CCDHR is calling on the government of Cameroon to be proactive in providing services to its citizens, and to establish ways of supporting programs like the Buea Council Scholarship for the Underprivileged, which specifically target the underprivileged population.