Establishing and Implementing the Right to Non-discrimination of Refugee Status under International Law: What relevance for Application in Cameroonian?

Abstract

It is a general principle under human rights law that not all distinction in treatment constitutes elements of discrimination. This is summed by the adage that, “persons who are equal should be treated equally, those who are different should be treated equally, and those who are different should be treated differently”. Although with all these emphasis, it is obvious that not all differences in treatment are discriminatory making international law to establish criteria in determining when a distinction perse will amounts to discrimination. Concisely, as we will be examining in this article, the concept of non-discrimination of persons especially those pertaining to refugees has been embraced by the Cameroonian government with lots of fortitude through the application of their various legal dispositions put in place. This initiative of refugee’s protection in safeguarding its non-discriminatory to those who enters its territory in the status of refugees are given minimum protection in the respect and protection of their fundamental human rights. This initiative has gone a long way through the enactment of relevant laws and institutional set up in ensuring that refugees entering the territory of Cameroon should be free from any sort of discriminatory practices, even though such protection offered has raised lots of questioning, certainties and worries in the eyes of many, and even the international community at large. The question here is to entertain whether the various human rights and legal dispositions effected by the Cameroon legal machineries has really provided that minimum protected offered by the international community when dealing with human right issues especially those pertaining to non-discriminatory as far as treatment of refugees are concerned.