[This is an excerpt from an article in The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs and Policy Studies.]

The Commonwealth as linguistic actor

The Commonwealth is not unique in its lack of activated response to Cameroonian crisis. There has been limited attention given to the crisis across the international community (Mutah, Citation2022). Yet the Commonwealth’s minimal involvement in a conflict that centres on formerly British-colonised, majority-Anglophone territory is curiously restrained given the Commonwealth’s role as the largest international organisation of Anglophone countries.

While Cameroon’s crisis is rooted in myriad factors, including its colonial legacies, democracy, economic and political power and institutions, it also has a distinctly linguistic character. Key grievances that motivated the 2016 protests of students, teachers and lawyers relate to marginalisation connected to language ability and identity, including problems with access to English-speaking government officials, limited opportunities for educational advancement, and poor translation of documents ranging from textbooks to key systems of laws and regulations. As the conflict has progressed, Anglophone identity has only appeared to strengthen. The 2018 Afrobarometer survey found that the proportion of respondents in the Anglophone regions who identified more strongly with their ethnic group than their nationality as Cameroonians had quadrupled since 2015, to 31% compared to 13% among Francophones (Lazar, Citation2019). To be an Anglophone Cameroonian, therefore, is to be a member of a collection of peoples with a shared history of linguistic, territorial, cultural and political experience (Atindogbé & Koumassol, Citation2023; Fonkoué, Citation2019; Fru, Citation2024). Understanding Anglophone identity is further complicated in that for the majority of Anglophone Cameroonians, English will be a second or third language, learned only at the schooling level after the more widely spoken Cameroonian Pidgin English, or more than 270 local languages which are used across the country (Akumbu, Citation2020; Chiatoh & Akumbu, Citation2014; Ethnologue, Citationn.d.). Regardless, this conflict has been mediated along what is an axis of linguistic difference, with key moments of inflection relating to language policy including the 2016 protests for educational and legal reforms and the 1983 student protests over planned ‘harmonisation’ of education systems between the Francophone and Anglophone regions (Konings, Citation2009). Therefore, it is evident that solutions to the crisis will necessitate acknowledgement, rights, representation and concessions related to language policy and grievances. Thus, Cameroon represents one of the strongest global examples of linguistic conflict, defined as conflict of which linguistic grievances or language policy play a key contributing or exacerbating role (Davies & Dubinsky, Citation2018; Smirnova & Iliev, Citation2017).

From the post-independence period to the present, calls from Anglophone Cameroonians for support from Britain and its associated Commonwealth on behalf of historical and linguistic connection have largely gone ignored (Torrent, Citation2012, p. 78). In 2018, declared acting-President of Ambazonia Ikome Sako called for Commonwealth member states to ‘end their deliberate silence’ on the crisis (Soter, Citation2018). In July 2019, the International Relations Committee of the UK Parliament launched an inquiry entitled ‘The UK and Sub-Saharan Africa – Prosperity, Peace, and Development Co-Operation’, and requested evidence on ‘How the UK can best support the AU’s Agenda 2063’ (‘Call for Evidence’, Citation2019). In response, the Global Campaign for Peace and Justice in Cameroon submitted written evidence testifying that ‘English-speaking Cameroonians look to the UK for support’ due to the colonial legacy of Britain in the country (Fearnley, Citation2020). The following years of lacklustre response from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth display a hesitancy of prominent Anglophone countries to intervene on behalf of Cameroon’s Anglophone population.

Research Article: Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis and the question of the right to self-determination
Cameroon: No End In Sight For Anglophone Conflict
Cameroon: Ambazonia Awake?

Since the initial creation of the modern Commonwealth out of former British colonies in 1949, the organisation has been reluctant to view its member states as consisting of a linguistic or cultural community – in sharp contrast to the French Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (Torrent, Citation2012). Writing in the Guardian in 2013, Andrew Gallix summarised the difference in linguistic focus of the two former colonial powers: ‘Today, the symbol of British sovereignty is an independent currency. In France, it is an independent language’ (Gallix, Citation2013). As such, the Commonwealth focuses little on the linguistic commonality produced, often violently, by British colonisation. Yet within the African continent, and evidenced in Cameroon’s crisis, the ‘Francophone and Anglophone dichotomy, to a large extent, remains the bane of African Unity’ (Ebong, Citation2022). This dichotomy remains most visible and practised through divides in national language. The Commonwealth, however, appears interested in avoiding perception as a linguistic actor or a leader of Anglophone states – particularly considering recent additions to the Commonwealth of former French colonies, Gabon and Togo, both which use French as their official national language.

The international community as linguistic intervener

The Commonwealth’s reluctance to involve itself in one of the strongest representations of modern linguistic conflict is in line with a broader uncertainty among international organisations such as the United Nations as to their role in intervention in linguistic conflict and questions of domestic linguistic policy and rights. Despite the United Nations specifying principles of linguistic rights in documents including the 1966 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National, Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, there remains no legal guarantee to the rights of linguistic minorities (Dudar, Citation2012). A 2014 study of human rights enforcement institutions by Moira Paz found that key legal and enforcement bodies of the international community, such as ‘major human rights courts’ repeatedly fail to enforce the commitments to linguistic diversity, and remain unprepared ‘to force states to swallow the dramatic costs entailed by a true diversity-protecting regime’ (Paz, Citation2014). This reluctance to wade into questions of enforcement of linguistic rights for minorities is likely influenced by the historical fact that language, and language policy, has traditionally been viewed as a tool under a state’s control, a powerful force of identity-formation and resource-facilitation (Anderson, Citation1983; Scott, Citation1998). Moreover, most Commonwealth countries contain multitudes of linguistic minorities. Intervention or attention towards political grievances of a linguistic group on behalf of the Commonwealth would likely create precedent for countries grappling with related questions of identity, self-determination and language policy on their home turf.

Implications of a fractured relationship

Eight years into the civil war, there remains no clear path towards conflict resolution. Fatalities related to political violence in the North West and South West regions coded by ACLED have consistently remained above 1,000 fatalities per year.Footnote2 While the UCDP/PRIO dataset reports a reduction in state-based violence in the Anglophone regions in 2023 compared to the previous year, insurgent attacks on civilians have remained relatively constant (UCDP PRIO). Moreover, tensions have repeatedly flared in the early months of 2025 with increasing political crackdown on Anglophone and opposition parties. Several factors signal a potential for raised tensions and continued protracted political conflict in the coming months and years: 1) lessening international attention, 2) an uncertain political future for the presidency of Cameroon, and 3) an economic and diplomatic turn towards Russia and China.

Elena Frogameni, University of Oxford Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford, UK.