The African Union, (AU), has recognized the Executive Director of the Cameroon Youths and Students Forum for Peace, (CAMYOSFOP), Eugine Ngalim Nyuydine for his role in promoting peace and security on the continent.
Created in 2001, CAMYOSFOP is a civil society organization, (CSO), with special UN consultative status since 2013 in the domains of human rights and moral rearmament.
Ngalim was conferred the Roll of Honour award by the AU Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) for his job in materializing the Livingstone Formula on the involvement of CSOs in promoting peace, security and stability in Africa while he served as chairperson of the Peace and Security Cluster of the organ from 2015 – 2019.
The recognition was handed to the ardent peace crusader during a grand gala event on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 in the Ghanaian capital, Accra on the sidelines of the 20th anniversary of the AU civil society organ.
The anniversary event attracted a plethora of stakeholders including representatives of AU Member States, Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and International Partners amongst others.
Ngalim told NewsWatch that the award by the civil society organ of the AU is a very great recognition of his work at the continental level, and a call to do more.
“This recognition also means that the civil society has something to offer to processes of peace and security at the national and regional levels,” said Ngalim.
“Therefore, governments especially ours should believe and have confidence in civil society and make good use of civil society in the various processes of peace including negotiating peace, fight against illicit proliferation of small arms and light weapons and the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process amongst others”.
Elected Cameroon’s Representative to the 2nd ECOSOCC Permanent General Assembly in December 2015, Ngalim was reelected to same position in December 2018 for a four-year term.
As a member of the General Assembly, he was elected the Chairperson of the Peace and Security Cluster in March 2015 for a two-year mandate and re-elected for another term in 2017.
Prominent among his many achievements in this role is the fast-tracking of the Livingstone Formula on the involvement of the CSOs in the promotion of peace, security and the stability of Africa set up by the Peace and Security Council.
The AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) adopted the mechanism in 2008, but little was done vis-à-vis its operationalization seven years after.
By 2016 the Ngalim-headed cluster was able to organize the first civil society forum on Peace and Security on the sidelines of the PSC Retreat in Lusaka, Zambia and contributed to the adoption of the AU Master Road map on Silencing the guns in Africa by 2020.
The September Africa Amnesty Month on the voluntary handing of illicit weapons adopted in the road map is a civil society proposal, which was later endorsed by the decision of the AU Assembly in 2017. It has been commemorated all over the continent since then. And thanks to the Amnesty Month, over 1,500 illicit weapons were destroyed in Buea in the South West Region of Cameroon on May 19, 2021.
