Global Integrity Report: Cameroon - 2010

This peer-reviewed country report includes:

Integrity Indicators Scorecard: Scores, scoring criteria, commentary, references, and peer review perspectives for more than 300 Integrity Indicators.

Reporter's Notebook: An on-the-ground look at corruption and integrity from a leading local journalist.

Corruption Timeline: Ten years of political context to today's corruption and integrity issues.

HIGHLIghts

Across the board weaknesses characterize the landscape of Cameroon’s anti-corruption institutions, with very little real improvements since Global Integrity’s last assessment of the West African country in 2008. Poor performances abound, but among the most egregious is the absence of any legal right toaccess public information. The establishment of an ombudsman agency is still being discussed but has yet to be adopted. While an anti-corruption body does formally exist, its members are effectively members of the ruling political party and its investigations have little to show to-date. Ineffective conflicts of interest regulations hamper the judiciary and legislature by allowing nepotism and politicization to flourish. Law enforcement officials are often hamstrung when it comes to investigating their own, as cases into police abuse are opened and pursued only at the behest of the president.

From the Reporter's Notebook: Many editors, faced with choosing between professional ethics and professional solidarity, dare not openly criticize their erring colleagues, but regard the press as a mirror that does not reflect itself. Paul Nkemanyang, publisher of the Limbe-based Star newspaper, broke ranks in that sense at an executives meeting in Bamenda in June 2009. He picked on an edition of The Guardian Post. The Guardian Post publisher-editor, Ngah Christian Mbipngo, snarled: “It’s just jealousy, you do it, too.” No newspaper reported the exchange.