Since 2019, the Secretary-General, responding to a request by the Government of Cameroon, declared Cameroon eligible for funding under the Peace Building Fund (PBF) Peacebuilding and Recovery Facility for five years. Since then, the PBF has progressively become one of the critical sources of financing for peace initiatives in Cameroon, supporting the government and UN agencies with catalytic, risk-tolerant and timely funding for 12 projects with a cumulative budget of approximately 21 million USD, with a focus on three pillars: 1) Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, 2) Decentralization and 3) Bilingualism and Multiculturalism.

Over the same period, the world’s attention has increasingly turned to Cameroon as one country operationalizing the Humanitarian Development Peace Nexus (HDPN) in the face of multiple contexts for mixed migration and forced displacement, following members states commitments in 2016 at the first World Humanitarian Summit. A key factor of the HDPN approach is to address the root causes of conflicts. As many conflicts are linked to poverty and underdevelopment, it seeks complementarities by providing humanitarian aid, supporting socio-economic development and enhancing efforts for peacebuilding.

At this side event, a panel of representatives of the Government of Cameroon, the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office, Cameroon Civil Society, the Canadian Permanent Mission to New York and the OECD Migration and Skills Unit will share experiences drawn from their respective work and expertise to show how PBF financing can be further synergized with the humanitarian-development-peace nexus (HDPN), within Cameroon and beyond. This will be to ultimately advance on the United Nations agenda to strengthen migration governance specifically on the implementation of GCM, specifically by 1) sharing Cameroon experiences on PBF support in contexts of mixed migration for HDPN operationalization including support for pooled funds towards ‘zones of convergence’ and by 2) showing how the PBF and other funding mechanisms may use their leverage in financing to help steer migration policy debates and policies on humanitarian development coordination for GCM Objectives Two, Fifteen and Sixteen, with whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches.

Register here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEvcOiprT8rHNW3_GV76YoQIWv1IHb6nf9n#/…