At audience with culture minister: UNHCR ambassador hails Cameroon’s support to refugees.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, goodwill ambassador and slam poet, Emitihal Mahmoud, has hailed Cameroon’s hospitality and the support to refugees.

The Sudanese-American slam poet, fondly called Emi, was speaking recently during an audience granted her by the Minister of Arts and Culture, Bidoung Mkpatt. 

The audience took place at the Conviviality Hall of the National Museum in Yaounde on Thursday November 9.

Emitihal Mahmoud was accompanied during the audience by the Resident Representative of the UN High Commission for Refugees in Cameroon, Olivier Guillaume Béer.

Speaking to reporters after the audience, Emitihal Mahmoud said her love and passion for Cameroon started some three years ago when she went for a climate change programme. 

During the programme, Mahmoud said she encountered two refugees living at a camp in Cameroon.

She stated that: “I was able to include them in my poetry. I was able to include Cameroon and the work that is being done here in favour of refugees. So when the opportunity came to see the country with my eyes, I said we have to go to Cameroon”.

“Coming here for us means so much to me. Seeing the hospitality, the efforts and solutions here together with refugees who are included at every level and they are creating a living with nationals,” Mahmoud said, remains inspiring.

Minister Bidoung Mkpatt (third from right) speaking during audience

As African and an indigenous woman from Sudan, she hailed Cameroon’s community spirit. 

“It means a lot to me to see and use Cameroon as the example of what we can do in other countries as well. I heard people say Cameroon is a ‘continent’ and to me, I understand that the country alone is like a small Africa and it means a lot to know. It is a place of hospitality,” she said. 

Cameroon’s hospitality towards refugees, she said, “is a beautiful story that needs to be spread everywhere not only with refugees but in the entire continent when people are allowed to flourish and bring hope”.

Mahmoud saluted government’s efforts to protect refugees and combat climate change. She promised to spread the good works Cameroon has been doing to support refugees.

The Resident Representative of UNHCR to Cameroon, Olivier Béer, stated that a person without a culture is not different from someone that doesn't have what to eat. 

Beer saluted efforts to reinforce the capacity of refugees to be autonomous by providing them with health, food and shelter. Such support, Beer said, enables refugees to preserve their culture. “Culture is an essential element for self-construction,” Olivier Béer insisted.

The Minister of Arts and Culture, Minister Bidoung Mkpatt, said his ministry remains open for collaboration to support refugees. 

Going by the member of government, culture is at the service of humanism and permits all the refugees to maintain their identity.