Pursuant to the UDHR, the issue of citizen rights is universal. With the Honorable Maurice Kamto's story as backdrop, gain insight as to how those rights can be undermined and what elected officials in United States capital are doing about it.

Imagine that you are a member of a community that discriminates against a minority of its citizens. Like everyone privileged to live on this planet, you must decide whether to play the cards you were dealt to the best of their ability; you decide to make the most of your situation. As a result, your list of accomplish include becoming a respected professor of international law, a former dean of the faculty at University, and former chairman and special rapporteur of the U.N. International Law Commission. Your role in the latter led to successful negotiations that resolved a dispute with a border country.

The trajectory of your life leads to a prominent political appointment back home. Seeing an opportunity to help your marginalized community, you withdraw from government to form a movement that opposes policies of the current administration. Several years later, you run for president. You challenge the results, declare yourself the winner, and engage in peaceful protests. In retaliation, the government burns villages, closes schools, apprehends protesters, tortures and kills some, and you are on trial facing the death penalty. Such is the story of Cameroonian Maurice Kamto.

Cameroon is a country divided by two legal systems: the majority French civil law; the minority British common law. This division occurred when Germany lost its African colonies after World War II. The majority of Cameroon went to France; the Southern remainder to the United Kingdom. In 2017, the Cameroon Civil War, known as the Anglophone Crisis, broke out in Anglophone Cameroon. The following year, Mr. Kamto ran for president. Earlier this year, he was arrested.

Although Mr. Kamto, a Francophone Cameroonian, exercised UDHR 29 to better the lives of fellow citizens, his government violated UDHR 30 by interfering with the rights of its citizens. While Mr. Kamots’s and his fellow Anglophone civilian supporters and protests organizers of lawyers, teachers, and students exercising UDHR Articles 19, 20 and 21 to form opinions, peacefully assemble and to participate in government, their government violently repressed them by violating UDHR Articles 3, 5, 9 and 26 by interfering with their rights to life, liberty and personal security, and by committing torture, murder, imprisonment, and closing schools.

Although the Anglophone Crisis is not widely reported in the media, the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee have introduced H.Res.358 and S.Res.292, respectively, calling for the Cameroonian government to respect the human rights of all its citizens. Why should you care? Quoting Martin Niemöller, “First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist…Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.” UDHR 29 requires the same of us: to speak out. Maurice Kamto did. He set an example for the rest of us.

اسمي جنيس

I first wrote this reflection for a human rights class. Although the events took place many years ago, I remember them as though it were yesterday.

Robert was a thin, cockeyed, odd-looking boy who never smiled. One weekend, I learned that we had mutual friends. The following Monday, I approached him about it and that’s how we became acquainted. I learned how personable and friendly he was. We always greeted one another with smiles, chatted in the cafeteria or when our departures from school coincided.

Springtime brought with it boys from nearby high schools who sought a view of students at dismissal from our practically all-girls art school. They were harmless and we ignored them. One afternoon, Robert had left the building ahead of me; we did not get a chance to speak. He was walking alone several yards ahead. Suddenly and seemingly out of no where, a group of boys charged at Robert and proceeded to attack him. The slaps after slaps after slaps to his head were loud enough to cause everyone within earshot to stop and gasp. Meanwhile, Robert was bent over near the ground trying to protect his head. This was my most vivid memory of witnessing someone’s human rights being violated. I was shaken, I felt helpless and sick to my stomach.

Although UDHR Article 18 articulated an individual’s right to freedom of conscience and, therefore, to behave accordingly, Article 29 gave that individual a responsibility to respect the rights of others. In the instant case, a moral person would have likely believed that treating others as one would have wanted to be treated as a prudent rule of thumb when considering whether to engage the behavior supra. Since these were teenagers, however, they most likely allowed any subjective values they had or may have had about what was right and good, to become outweighed by peer pressure and a desire to fit in.

In the meantime, Robert’s human rights pursuant to, inter alia, UDHR Articles 1-7, had been violated. Consistent with UDHR Article 30, the purpose of the rule of law in American society is primarily to protect the health, safety, welfare and rights of citizens. Ethical considerations are in keeping with this purpose. Robert had the legal right to take himself to the nearest police station, file a police report, press charges against his assailants, and have his day in court. The problem here was this: the incident had taken place nearly three years after Stonewall. Legal remedies notwithstanding, the NYPD, and by extension the state, lacked the ethical and political will to protect him

In her book, Evidence of Hope, Kathryn Sikkink reminded us that advancement of human rights takes time, persistence and occurs in unexpected ways; Stonewall was the tip of a socially significant iceberg. The persistence of the LGBTQXYZ Community has resulted in openly “other” politicians, judges, lawyers, actors, educators, etc. Citing Theodore Parker, Martin Luther King Jr., reminded us that, “ the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” While there is more work to be done, the fight for justice has finally produced a generation people with the moral fortitude speak out, support and protect the rights of members of the Queer Community.

اسمي جنيس