CSPA Implementation Tracker

Since 2021, U.S. presidents have been required to include justifications for CSPA waivers that were issued during the previous year in the annual Trafficking in Persons Report. Cameroon’s 2020 waiver justification maintained that “[t]he U.S. government’s current military assistance goals with Cameroon are to increase: 1) military professionalization, 2) maritime security capabilities, and 3) counterterrorism capabilities. The limited U.S. military assistance to Cameroon plays a role in its ability to support regional stability and security, including in the strategically important Gulf of Guinea, and to address the threat in the Lake Chad region from Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa.”

According to the U.S. State Department, Cameroonian government security forces allegedly recruited and used a child to gather intelligence in the country’s Anglophone regions, where government forces and separatists have been fighting a civil war since 2017. Following these allegations, Cameroon appeared on the 2020 CSPA list. Cameroonian authorities did not report investigating the incident as of March 2021. However, the U.S. State Department did not indicate it received any additional reports of child soldier recruitment or use by government forces between April 2020 and March 2021, and Cameroon was subsequently removed from the 2021 CSPA list.

For more information, see the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report and Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. More information on the situation in Cameroon can also be found in the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict.