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Abstract:
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"The Mbororo Pastoralist Indigenous peoples are cattle herders who migrated into Cameroon in 1905 and live mostly on hill tops where they graze their cattle in a purely traditional manner, migrating from place to place especially during transhumance. Their desire to acquire, own and exploit land for grazing is therefore their paramount interest. The quest for grazing land in an environment of increasing population of farmers puts the Mbororos on daily conflicts with their neighboring farmers.
"Cameroon has very good laws on paper but the implementation of these laws leaves much to be desired. In January 1996, Cameroon had a new constitution, which is still operational today. The 1996 constitution provides inter alia that the state shall ensure the protection of minorities and shall preserve the rights of indigenous populations in accordance with the law. This provision of the constitution not withstanding, nothing has been done by the state to protect and preserve the rights of the Mbororo minority indigenous population. The Mbororos being mostly illiterates have limited access to public services and reduced knowledge of their rights.
"The goal of MBOSCUDAs Access to Justice Programme in the North West of Cameroon is to design and drive a scheme that will support Mbororo communities to take up their citizenship and negotiate social justice for themselves through awareness creation of their rights and responsibilities while building their capacities to eventually secure these rights for themselves. The programme, which started in 2000, carried out a research on the psycho legal environment of the Mbororos, carried out community education campaigns on civil/civic rights and responsibilities, recruited and trained community based paralegals (psycho-legal counselors) and community facilitators, provided legal representation in Law courts to victims of human rights abuses, Monitored and supervised community based paralegals and shared learning and successes between groups and communities.
"The aim of this paper is to draw from this experience to protect common property rights and will focus in its elaboration on one or two specific cases."
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