Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment his Department made of trends in the level of reported ethnic and linguistic tensions in Cameroon in the last three years.

Cameroon is a highly ethnically diverse and bilingual country with over 250 ethnic groups and English and French as official languages. The violence in the Anglophone regions is not founded in ethnic roots, but generates from perceived marginalisation of the Anglophone minority. The UK is deeply concerned at the deteriorating violence, deaths and displacement of people which has increased since the end of 2016 with severe effect on civilians. We are working closely with the wider international community, including the UN, to build as full and accurate a picture as possible. The UK continues to raise our concerns with the Government of Cameroon to take urgent action to call for restraint and to end violence on all sides.