Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of the impact on the humanitarian situation in South West Cameroon of the suspension in late March of the activities of the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), further to the ongoing detention of four MSF staff members by the Cameroonian Government.

The humanitarian situation in the North West and South West (Anglophone) regions of Cameroon continues to have a tragic impact on civilians. Violence between separatist groups and Government forces has displaced 1.1 million people; over 2 million people require humanitarian support and 850,000 children are without safe access to school. MSF is an important health actor in the North West and South West regions and its temporary withdrawal has left gaps in health service provision which will disproportionately impact vulnerable populations. The UN is trying to manage these gaps; for example in April it allocated $1.7 million Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) funds to address a cholera outbreak in the South West, which typically the MSF would have been well placed to cover.

We have allocated over £21 million of humanitarian support for needs in Cameroon over the last five years, and regularly call for continued humanitarian access. We continue to engage with UN and other humanitarian actors active across Cameroon to ensure that urgent needs are met, including most recently with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on 29 April, on the impact of the suspension of humanitarian activities.