The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and 27 leading civil society organisations have called for Cameroon to be added to the formal agenda of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG). CMAG meets this week in New York and has the power to suspend Cameroon from the Commonwealth; it includes Secretary-General Patricia Scotland, and the foreign ministers of Australia, Barbados, Belize, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Namibia, Samoa, and the United Kingdom.

Civil society is raising attention to indiscriminate killings, arbitrary arrests, detention without recourse to justice, torture, and asserts the Government of Cameroon to be in breach of the Commonwealth Charter, Latimer House Principles, and the Harare Declaration.

David White, CHRI’s London Head commented: ‘CMAG was set up to deal with serious and persistent violators of the shared principles, which is precisely the situation in Cameroon. This is a call from civil society for the the Secretary-General and CMAG to act in defence of the very values that bind our Commonwealth together.’