Making peace within hierarchy: Seeing international peacemaking, world order, and history from Cameroon

Abstract

What do different ways of seeing the world mean for actors engaged in peacemaking? Through the case of Cameroon, I illustrate the critical yet often-overlooked role of one’s conceptions of self in the world – how actors see the world and their positions within it – in shaping peace processes. Considering the growing debate over the conceptualisation of the world order as anarchic or hierarchical and foregrounding Cameroonian articulations, I examine how notions of hierarchy and hypocrisy are constitutive of the conflict actors’ perceptions of the world and condition their engagements in foreign-led mediation concerning the Anglophone Crisis. Drawing on over 60 interviews, including those with Cameroonian ruling party members, opposition politicians, and individuals leading the armed separatist movement, I explain how considerations of self-image and status are powerful drivers of behaviours and not aspects that can be dismissed as ‘irrational’ or ‘overly sensitive’; rather, various Cameroonian actors deploy themes of hierarchy and hypocrisy in highly rational and intentional ways to further their aspirations. Inspired by Historical International Relations and reverse ethnography, the article challenges the presentist bias in much of today’s analysis of global politics and offers a historically conscious explanation of conflict parties’ behaviour in mediation.

Introduction

As research on peace mediation grew in the post–Cold War period, with such interventions becoming more commonplace, much conflict resolution scholarship has been premised on the rational actor model. Dominant approaches focus on interests and needs, and peace mediation is considered within a framework of interest-based bargaining in view of a ‘mutually acceptable agreement’ for all parties.¹ Interests are largely conceived in material, rather than ideational or symbolic, terms, and scholarly debates primarily conceptualise actors’ motivations as a maximisation of self-interest.² Building on the small but growing literature that recognises the importance of identities and worldviews in peace mediation, this article focuses on the critical role of a particular aspect of identity on mediation dynamics: one’s conceptions of self in the world. The article demonstrates how interests that shape actors’ behaviours in sites of peacemaking do not emerge out of a vacuum but are conditioned by one’s individual and collective identities and perceptions of their own global positionings. These understandings are themselves moulded by how actors have historically experienced the world in their previous interactions with the outside world. Participating – or choosing not to participate – in an externally led mediation process, as well as how to behave in those engagements, are then decisions derived from not just from a future-oriented costs and benefits calculation of what the process might yield, but also a history-informed response based on outcomes that similar interactions have brought in the past.

While much research on mediation relies on a snapshot of conflict parties' interests, the article offers a more historically conscious explanation, one that importantly draws on the scholarship illuminating the entanglement of race, eurocentrism, and knowledge production.³ Such historical and racial lenses are particularly pertinent to the topic of mediation, given that many places in the world that are on the receiving end of international, still largely Western-led, mediation harbour intense memories of the West and carry the ‘dumped … weight’ of white privilege, which invariably colours their understandings of the latter’s actions and intentions.⁴ This article therefore contextualises mediation endeavours into world history as opposed to Western history,⁵ with a view to tempering the historical ‘hyper-agency’ that has been attributed to the West in traditionally theorising the world order.⁶ Towards this end, it takes seriously the perspectives of non-Western actors as sources of concepts and theories that can be applied beyond their contexts, rather than approaching them with a purpose of testing theories generated in the West.

Inspired by Historical International Relations and reverse ethnography, the article situates mediation endeavours within the conflict parties’ deep-seated understandings of the broader ordering of the world through the case of Cameroon, particularly in relation to the state’s engagement with Western mediators concerning the Anglophone Crisis.⁷ Long-standing grievances of the unfulfilled desire for independence, coupled with marginalisation under successive Francophone-led governments, in the two regions that had formerly been under British rule evolved into a violent armed conflict between the state security forces and secessionist-leaning rebel groups in 2017, leading to at least 6,000 people killed and 685,000 displaced, accompanied by severe disruptions to economic and social activities.⁸ In such a context, Switzerland attempted a facilitation process between 2019 and 2022. The article analyses this process against the backdrop of the increasingly pronounced discussion around the fundamental ordering of today’s international system – the anarchy versus hierarchy debate. With more research uncovering ‘alternative globalities’⁹ and different ways of thinking about the world that challenge the concept of anarchy as the defining feature of International Relations (IR),¹⁰ the article demonstrates how the notion of hierarchy offers a prism to make sense of the evolving positionings of conflict parties vis-à-vis the Swiss-led facilitation process.

Foregrounding prominent Cameroonian articulations of seeing the world, particularly how both elite and popular narratives evoke certain themes as part of their legitimising discourses, reveals how Cameroon’s complex colonial history and its post-colonial trajectory are critical backdrops against which decisions of today are made. In addition to hierarchy, hypocrisy acts as another discursive anchor around which much of Cameroonian critique around the West’s double standards and disdain for inequalities converges. The perceived discrepancy between the West’s often lofty rhetoric and practice, as well as the international community’s double standards in their attitudes towards violence in Africa as opposed to, for example, Ukraine, finds deep resonance across Cameroonian society and inform attitudes towards Western-led peace processes. Explaining Cameroonian attitudes and decisions in their own terms, the article sheds light on Cameroonian agency within today’s world order and how different actors deploy these perspectives about the world in highly rational and intentional ways. As part of this exercise, the article asks how Switzerland as an actor is perceived among Cameroonians, engaging in a form of what post-colonial thinkers have described as reverse ethnography. Building on the ‘right, legitimacy, and necessity of non-Western gazes directed at the West’, reverse ethnography allows for the examination of questions that are peculiar to their subjects’ understandings of self and international existence.¹¹ In this regard, it is currently an under-appreciated lens for avoiding ethnocentrism and exceptionalism in the spirit of building a ‘Global IR’ that transcends the problematic divide between ‘the West and Rest’.¹²

This article seeks to make significant contributions to the study of peace mediation specifically and that of IR more broadly. As the first explicit attempt to wed the literatures on world order and mediation, the article brings a valuable lens to unpack the power dynamics in today’s international peacemaking and offers hierarchy as a highly relevant concept in understanding mediation. In fact, that the very practice of intervention, including those executed in the name of peace, is underpinned by the hierarchical international structure makes this endeavour particularly appropriate.¹³ Second, by foregrounding the perspectives of Cameroonian actors, the article addresses the current imbalance in the mediation literature that tends to consider mediators as their focus of analysis, at the expense of the ‘mediated’ themselves.¹⁴ By highlighting Cameroonian conceptualisations, the article joins the call to centre the agency of conflict parties in shaping mediation processes and outcomes.¹⁵ Third, the article examines the racial angle in mediation, which has been seldom studied even in critical peacebuilding literature.¹⁶ Beyond mediation, the article tackles one of the most fundamental debates of IR concerning the world order through a concrete case study and advances a much-called-for hierarchy-centred empirical analysis that offers a way to capture more of politics in world politics.¹⁷

It is worth noting here that there are multiple outside world(s) of relevance for actors in Cameroon, as there would be for any other country. Many would, for example, distinguish between the proximate neighbourhood and further afield(s). In my analysis, I focus on and speak of Cameroon’s perceptions of ‘the West’, reflecting the common discursive categorisation repeated in many of my interviews and conversations around peacemaking. It is also for this reason that I employ the terms of West/non-West over other possible classifications, such as Global North/South, which were comparatively much less prominent. Also of note, worldviews in Cameroon, as in any other country,¹⁸ are by no means homogeneous, and it would be overly ambitious to present here a comprehensive picture. The themes uncovered in this article then should be understood as those that are widely shared across the society, and more in-depth research into the nuances and divergences in the kaleidoscope of worldviews in Cameroon would be an important avenue for future research.

Following this introduction, I begin with a review of the scholarship on mediation and worldviews, then the growing interrogation of today’s world order. Bridging these two literatures that have rarely been discussed together, I highlight the value of hierarchy when understanding the power dynamics in foreign-led peace processes. I then discuss my case selection and methods and reflect on both the opportunities and tensions concerning my positionality. Next, I turn to the empirics and present two prominent themes of Cameroonian articulations of the world: hierarchy and hypocrisy. Through reverse ethnography, I illustrate how Switzerland as an actor within the world order is popularly perceived in Cameroon and how these perceptions shaped the Cameroonian government’s engagement with the Swiss facilitation attempt.

Worldviews in peacemaking

While both the research and practice of mediation remains heavily influenced by rationalist-materialist perspectives, scholars from various subfields of conflict and peace studies have underscored the pertinence of ideational aspects, including those of identities and worldviews, in peace processes. Hellmüller and colleagues, for example, have highlighted how norms matter in mediation,¹⁹ while Duursma has shown the role of legitimacy in mediation success.²⁰ Similarly, Korostelina and colleagues stress the importance of understanding ‘how parties in conflict see themselves and one another’, as well as the potential of cross-cutting and superordinate identities in transforming formerly acrimonious intergroup relations.²¹ Several scholars have also explicitly sought to examine the role of worldviews, defined here as the critical perceptual, conceptual, emotional, and relational filter through which one figures, ranks, and seeks to satisfy needs and interests.²² In mediated peace processes, collision of worldviews can occur along at least two dimensions: between conflict parties as well as between the conflict party/ies and the mediator. Regarding the former, Docherty for example explains how a clash of worldviews that involved fundamentally different assumptions about human nature led to divergent notions of reality in the case of the Waco conflict, leading to a deadlock in negotiations.²³

Increasingly, more attention has been paid to the latter dimension and how the misalignments among the mediator’s and the parties’ worldviews may complicate efforts to resolve conflicts.²⁴ What is often referred as a ‘liberal’ worldview, within which most Western mediators and their standard approaches are embedded, is invariably one of many worldviews; as such, a failure to acknowledge that both their procedural and substantive norms are far from ‘neutral or self-evidently right and just’ would risk impeding mediation efforts.²⁵ Indeed, different worldviews of the West and those of other regions have had profound implications for conflict resolution.²⁶ Mapping the philosophical, moral, psychological and cultural framework underpinning Western conflict resolution, Salem points out that the ‘blanket assumption that peace is, in any conditions “good” … and working for peace is always, regardless of circumstances and conditions, a good thing’ itself reflects a particular zeitgeist of the West and may be questionable in other contexts.²⁷ In such light, even the supposedly neutral and virtuous call for a cessation of hostilities can be interpreted as dismissing the legitimacy of the grievances of certain conflict parties, particularly the insurgents. In fact, the international community’s tendency to ‘rush to mediation on automatic pilot’ and call for reconciliation risks provoking animosity and indignation among those in the conflict contexts who may consider their sufferings diminished and grievances overlooked and now feel threatened to concede to ‘indecent’ compromises.²⁸

Recognising that most violent conflicts have a worldview dimension and the importance for mediators to map their own worldviews and possible biases, the conflict resolution field, often spearheaded by scholar-practitioners, has begun to develop approaches to address tensions and potential blockages that may arise from worldview differences; Bitter and colleagues, for example, suggest a model of engagement termed ‘mediation space’ that involves leaders across divides to explore options that could be explained within the worldviews of different communities,²⁹ while Abatis points to ‘culturally oriented mediation’ as a potential way to reckon with worldview contestations.³⁰ Similarly, Folger and Bush speak of ‘transformative mediation’ to articulate a relational model of mediation and emphasise the importance of the views and perceptions of affected parties.³¹ The diversification of mediators with competing worldviews and the more pluralist normative environment today³² make such efforts to better understand and navigate the relationship between worldviews and mediation a particularly timely endeavour.

Peacemaking, world order, and hierarchy

How, then, are worldviews intertwined with power structures within the international system? And what does this mean for peacemaking? With peace mediation being an inherently relational endeavour, whether a conflict party perceives its relationship with an intervening third party in an equal or hierarchical manner has a significant bearing in their attitudes towards a peace process. Concerns of identity – about the self and its position in the world – shape international dynamics to a much greater extent than is usually anticipated, including in international peacemaking. Recognising mediation as a site where such social dimensions of international interactions play out allows us to see how stakeholders behave not just according to the rational actor model based on material interests, but also in response to its concerns about asserting its status and furthering a particular self-image on the world stage.

Today’s growing debate questioning the concept of anarchy as the core feature of the international system in favour of hierarchy calls us to take seriously the forms of global stratification within which international peacemaking plays out. While the formal recognition of sovereign equality and the dominant prism of anarchy in depicting the world order have left entrenched hierarchies in place while de-politicising them,³³ the growing body of research that critically interrogates the history out of which the current order emerged exposes the eurocentric underpinnings – and the limited explanatory power – of the concept of anarchy.³⁴ For Keene, for example, the continued dominance of the concept of anarchy itself reflects the discipline’s disproportionate focus on relations between Europeans at the expense of those between Europeans and non-Europeans when theorising the global order.³⁵

In fact, race and racial hierarchies, as well as the hierarchy between the North and South,³⁶ have long occupied a central place in the writings of prominent African thinkers. As early as the late nineteenth century, Du Bois spoke of the infamous ‘color line’, deploring how ‘with slavery and colonialism, “color” became in the world’s thought synonymous with inferiority’.³⁷ Many have since responded to Du Bois’s call to uncover ‘a surreptitious counter-narrative’ of the world, and Black anti-colonial thinkers in the interwar period have, for example, produced comprehensive writings identifying race as a structure that stratified the world with far-reaching consequences.³⁸ It is worth noting that race as a regime of global stratification has been framed in different guises over time; when by the mid-20th century race as a concept no longer commanded scientific authority, the narrative evolved into ‘the language of temporal difference’,³⁹ carrying with it deep racial undertones.⁴⁰

Despite the prominence of hierarchy within critical scholarship, the geopolitical backdrop against which IR developed helps explain why anarchy remains in its hegemonic place. As core questions of IR developed in line with Cold War imperatives revolving around the issue of security dilemma, race and other forms of stratification were ‘made irrelevant’, relegated to the realm of domestic politics and stripped of their explanatory agency at the international level.⁴¹ Then, the end of the Cold War and the rise of a single superpower ‘bequeathed to the world … one political and moral imaginary’, leaving little room for pluralistic visions of the world order beyond that of anarchy.⁴² Conflict and peace studies has been mired with similar blind spots concerning eurocentrism and race; for Jabri, for example, peacebuilding interventions disseminate particular – Western – conceptions of ‘peace’,⁴³ while Sabaratnam argues that even the critical liberal peace literature remains limited by eurocentric assumptions.⁴⁴ Likewise, even within the scholarship that is critical of Western-centric approaches to peacebuilding, the racial angle is seldom explored. The year 2020, rocked by the Black Lives Matter movement, then propelled to the forefront and ascribed a new level of urgency to questions of race and hierarchy in IR, as well as the field of conflict and peace studies, building on the legacies and steady proliferation of books, articles, conferences, and workshops that had focused on race in the preceding decades.⁴⁵

Productive effects of hierarchy

Whether one conceptualises the world as anarchic or hierarchical is far from a purely ontological matter; it produces and conditions identities, interests, and behaviours. Examples of the productive effects of hierarchy, largely drawing from experiences of non-Western entities, are now plenty. Zarakol, for example, demonstrates how stigmatisation within an understanding of a hierarchical world order has led stigmatised states, in this case Turkey, Japan, and Russia, to become extra-sensitive to concerns about status and self-image; they shape their foreign policy accordingly, with identity-oriented policies at times preferred over options with potentially greater material yields.⁴⁶ Osman also illustrates how global racial hierarchies undergird Liberian ethnonationalist politics by tracing how transatlantic slavery and colonialism continue to ‘haunt and orchestrate’ political actors in Liberia.⁴⁷ In the field of conflict and peace studies, Stearns explains how interests of belligerents need to be examined not assumed, outlining how main stakeholders in the conflict in the Congo interpreted their interests through distinct worldviews and their situated histories.⁴⁸

Case, methods, and positionality

Cameroon is a fascinating case that elucidates the role of a state’s self-understanding in the world on its behaviour, one that may even be described as an ‘extreme case’ given its ‘unusual’ nature compared to many other African countries today, particularly former French colonies, in its public positionings vis-à-vis the West.⁴⁹ Compared to, for example, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Burundi, where government officials publicly voice trenchant criticisms of the West, as well as Niger, which recently banned French aircraft from flying over its airspace, Cameroon’s official rhetoric is much more muted and continues to speak of ‘friendship’ regarding its relationship with former colonial powers. When President Macron visited Cameroon in July 2022, the Cameroonian government arranged for ‘jubilant crowds’ to be present at the airport to ensure that the French president was ‘welcomed in full splendour’;⁵⁰ on the days around Macron’s visit, the French tricolour and placards welcoming Macron filled the roads in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé.⁵¹ In some respects, then, Cameroon almost stands out in its public and official friendliness towards Europe. This notwithstanding, ambiguous, cynical, and bitter attitudes towards outsiders, particular those from ‘the Whiteman kontri’,⁵² are still ubiquitous. Virulent anti-French sentiments are on the rise in popular discourse,⁵³ one that government representatives in turn appropriate for their gains; their tactical engagement in public ‘anti-imperial performances’ serves to mask the ‘more insidious, material, and existent’ forms of ‘corporate and economic neoimperialism’ that provide important resources for maintaining state power.⁵⁴

The article primarily draws from my conversations and observations during five months of field research in both Anglophone and Francophone regions of Cameroon (Buea, Limbe, Tiko, Yaoundé, Douala, Bafoussam, and Dschang) between 2021 and 2023.⁵⁵ During three separate visits, I conducted over 60 interviews, including with government officials, opposition politicians, prominent individuals involved in the armed separatist movement, and civil society figures based both in urban and rural areas,⁵⁶ and engaged in participant-observation in community-level dialogue initiatives. Interviews conducted in Cameroon were importantly complemented with conversations with several of the same people outside Cameroon as well, a multi-sited approach that led to illuminating insights particularly regarding aspects of race and hierarchy. While developing this analysis, I also frequently referred to over 150 pages of field journal written over the course of research from 2021 to 2023. Given the use of speeches as a tool to wield power in Cameroon and that Presidential speeches are among the few sources that reflect the inner thoughts of the senior political leadership,⁵⁷ I complement these with a critical discourse analysis of 39 speeches delivered by President Biya from 2015 to 2023, with which I seek to particularly uncover repeated themes and reference points in Cameroon’s relationships with the outside world.⁵⁸

I analysed the collected data through cycles of coding and analytic memo-writing, during which I relied heavily on the ‘in vivo’ coding method; this method of using terms drawn verbatim from the interlocutors can be particularly appropriate when studying peripheral, marginalised voices and can serve as a ‘mirror of their worldviews’.⁵⁹ Through multiple cycles of coding and recoding that allowed for refining and regrouping several ‘in vivo’ codes into more conceptual categories, I identified the two prominent themes in Cameroonian articulations of the world order discussed in this article: hierarchy and hypocrisy.

My positionality also warrants reflection. While I initially expected that conducting such research would be incredibly difficult as a non-Cameroonian based in Europe, my extended stays in Cameroon showed that there were dimensions of my identity that helped to strengthen trust. Despite being affiliated with a European institution, the fact the I didn’t ‘look European’ – or ‘look white’ – often led to surprising openness for interlocutors to share their perceptions of the West more freely during conversations.⁶⁰ While I was certainly racialised within Cameroon’s complex racial ‘pecking order’,⁶¹ these layers of hierarchies operated differently across space, with my own race being interpreted differently depending on whether interactions happened inside Cameroon or in Europe. Several of my interviews with Cameroonian actors, for example, occurred on the margins of diplomatic events organised in European cities. It is notable that it was during these conversations situated in white-majority spaces that racial references were easily expressed, sometimes triggered by a prior exchange of a silent nod while sitting through an uncomfortable situation in the main spaces of the event.

During one particularly telling interaction, my interviewee ended explaining her frustrations to me by explicitly noting that ‘you would understand because you’re also treated differently’, clearly alluding to how both our racial identities make us stand out in these white-majority spaces, creating a type of rapport that would be highly unlikely in most settings inside Cameroon.⁶² While I met with most of these interlocutors also in Cameroon, the clear, comparative lack of racial references by the same people is likely reflective of how I was positioned differently on the racial hierarchy depending on geographical settings. That said, I am certainly cognisant that my outsider status significantly shaped my research, including in considerations around risk management. In tightly controlled political landscapes such as the one in Cameroon, where scholars and activists are ‘having to constantly test the frontiers of freedom [of speech]’,⁶³ asking politically sensitive questions is an immense privilege in itself, enabled by the simple fact that ‘if worse comes to worst, [I have] a ticket out’.⁶⁴

The world from Cameroon

History’s shadow: ‘Macron is coming to put things in place’

One indisputable way through which Cameroonians experience the world order is through the perceived persistence of historical colonial patterns in decision-making. Resentment vis-à-vis the West, in particular the former imperial powers, runs across the society, and the prominent language of ‘imposition’ as well as an opposing notion of ‘hopelessness’ points to the perception of sustained colonial relations in both material and ideational dimensions. The statement that the ‘imposition’ of the CFA franc, and more broadly France’s economic policy towards Cameroon, is one of the three most serious problems in Cameroon represents a very material idea of imposition.⁶⁵ Such a view is echoed across the political spectrum, including by those aligned with the government. A retired senior government official, while complaining about the traffic and the roadblocks caused by Macron’s visit to Yaoundé in July 2022, would utter, ‘Why did he come here? He could’ve just given his orders over the phone.’⁶⁶ The theme of imposition extends beyond the material realm into more ideational and symbolic ones. Joshua Osih, whose presidential campaign for the 2018 elections called for the closure of ENAM, the National School of Administration and Magistracy, explains his rationale by invoking the persistence of France’s influence over Cameroon:

ENAM is a deep symbol of French domination … the French never moved out of Cameroon, they are still present. They simply changed colour … from white to black. So they said, to have good black people, they need to create a school where we’ll make them work for the French … Through ENAM they control the judiciary, the administration, the political.⁶⁷

Those who advocate for greater political autonomy of the Anglophone regions, from genuine decentralisation to secession, also blame France for ‘masterminding’ the assimilation agenda and argue that ‘Françafrique culture is the invisible hand’ behind Cameroon’s policies.⁶⁸ ‘In Cameroon, when it is itching on the right hand, the hand moves to itch the left hand. Why? We can speculate, but maybe there is a string that pulls the hand towards the left’, a large business owner would say, alluding to France as the string.⁶⁹ The contested outcome of the 1992 presidential election is frequently identified as the pivotal moment that led Anglophones in Cameroon to ask, ‘do we really belong in this country?’ A religious leader originally from the North West captures this popular view as he explains, ‘it was actually won by an Anglophone, but France said “we cannot let a French province being run by an Anglophone”’.⁷⁰ A pro-independence activist in the diaspora similarly claims, ‘if we want real change, we need to talk to Paris, not Yaoundé’, another reflection of the perception that France still ‘pulls the strings’ in Cameroon.⁷¹

Though subtle, a similar narrative of imposition also appears in official government rhetoric, pointing to the regime’s adeptness in drawing on these sentiments for their own purposes. Speaking to largely domestic audiences, Biya repeatedly stresses that most of the ‘ordeals’ faced by Cameroon today were ‘imposed on us by the global environment’.⁷² In response to such externally-posed threats, such as ‘protectionist’ tendencies that generate ‘a destabilizing effect on many countries, particularly developing countries like ours’,⁷³ the Cameroonian government emerges as the solution-provider: ‘to develop the sectors of our economy to reduce the imports of goods and services … enabling us to balance the chronic trade deficit’.⁷⁴

This is closely linked to the discourse around Africa’s historical place in the world. Historical resentment stemming from the colonial past extends beyond France and to Britain and the United Nations (UN), which are both frequently blamed for the current crisis. Such critiques are perhaps most harshly voiced by those advocating for secessionism but are certainly more widespread among the Anglophone population. A member of a separatist armed group, the Bambalang Marine Forces, articulates a common narrative among the separatists: ‘we are in this nonsense situation because the UN disrespected us in the first place. They refused to give us a choice to be independent on our own. The British sold us to the French and condemned us to a life of slavery.’⁷⁵ Such anti-UN sentiments held by the armed groups, and more generally the Anglophone population,⁷⁶ also lie behind the graffiti on the road in Bamenda: ‘we protest at UNHCR Station [an area in Bamenda] not government’ (Figure 1). An Anglophone lawyer involved in various cases related to the current crisis also notes that the ‘botched independence’ was the ‘handiwork of the UN’, which is now not interested.⁷⁷

Figure 1. Graffiti written by armed groups on the road in Bamenda, reflecting anti-UN sentiments.

Picture retrieved from www.mimimefoinfos.com on 23 November 2021.

Regarding historical grievances concerning the British, a teacher based in the North West region explains, ‘the greater blame is with the UN, or actually the British. When French gave independence, they helped in the ensuing period. The British just left.’⁷⁸ Relatedly, when Anglophones from across the political spectrum speak of the origins of the current crisis, it is frequently repeated that the former Southern Cameroons were given by Britain to France as ‘le petit cadeau de la reine’ [a small gift from the queen] and, as popularly believed, in exchange for the Gambia.⁷⁹ This history notwithstanding, some separatist activists continue to call on Britain to support their cause in the international arena, reflecting the Anglophone’s population’s extremely complex and multilayered relationship with Britain. Since their distinct identity strongly draws on their British colonial period, the time under British rule is often recalled through a rose-tinted lens and sometimes positively evoked to draw a distinction with the rest of Cameroon that was under French rule; English is said to be ‘the language [of] civilisation’, and the common law system obviously ‘fairer’ than the civil law system.⁸⁰ Yet this certainly coexists with a strong sense of bitterness at the sense of abandonment at the end of the British mandate period.

The recognition of the historical hierarchies experienced by Africa, as well as the desire to address their persistence, is becoming an increasingly prominent feature in the official state discourse in recent years. In 2017, President Biya at the UN General Assembly raised a number of questions in this regard:

Is it not yet time for the voice of poor countries, especially those of Africa, to be heard? … Is it not high time to restructure our Organization to give more weight to Africa’s voice within a revitalized General Assembly, a Security Council that is more receptive and equitable to us?⁸¹

A similar narrative was repeated on the same platform in 2021.⁸² While such statements are not limited to Cameroon but are widely shared among African states, it clearly reflects Cameroon’s understanding of the hierarchical and unequal order of the contemporary world behind the veil of juridical sovereign equality.

Different emphases regarding history in the speeches addressed to different audiences also reflect how Yaoundé is keenly aware of which themes would resonate with which audiences. Notwithstanding ‘the state’s obsession with reconstructing the past in its own image’,⁸³ references to history, admittedly vague, frequently appear in President Biya’s speeches to African audiences. During the former Nigerian president Buhari’s visit to Yaoundé in 2015, for example, Biya spoke of the ‘strong and indestructible ties created by our geographic closeness and by History’.⁸⁴ Similarly, during the then Chadian president Deby’s visit the following year, Biya drew attention to ‘the depth, density and solidity of the ties … founded on relations established in the course of History’.⁸⁵

On the other hand, references to history are conspicuously absent in Biya’s annual speeches to the diplomatic corps, where the primary target audience is the West. In its place is the regular reference to ‘persistent inequalities in global trade’ that forms a running thread in the speeches to the diplomatic corps between 2015 and 2023, as well as concerns raised at the UN General Assembly that ‘the gap between rich and poor countries is ever widening’.⁸⁶ Rare historical references focus on economic inequality; for example, during former French president Hollande’s 2015 visit to Yaoundé, President Biya reminds France that ‘we still bear the stigma of structural adjustment’, pointing to a Bretton Woods policy towards Africa in the 1990s that is now widely accepted to have had serious economic and social repercussions across the continent.⁸⁷

Charges of hypocrisy: ‘The West’s double standards will come back to stab them’

Unlike other international orders, today’s ‘liberal international order’ claims to differ in its moral standing as it upholds core ‘liberal’ values, such as equal membership, universal rationality, and the sanctity of individual rights; against such lofty claims, perceptions of double standards render it particularly vulnerable to the ‘hypocrisy charge’.⁸⁸ This is certainly a recurrent feature in Cameroon’s depictions of the world order. Here, it is noteworthy that the West’s policies towards supposedly unrelated issues, notably migration and the war in Ukraine, strengthen such perceptions and inform Cameroonian attitudes towards mediation processes.

Particularly telling is how both the official and popular narratives in Cameroon discuss Europe’s border policies concerning the so-called refugee crisis since 2015. At the level of state rhetoric, critiques have become particularly more acute since 2017, coinciding with the period that Yaoundé was put under heightened international pressure concerning the Anglophone Crisis.⁸⁹ In contrast to early 2016 when President Biya had spoken rather respectfully of Europe’s ‘dilemma’ arising from ‘such migration of an unprecedented scale’ and even suggested that ‘so-called economic migrants’ be ‘sent back to their countries of origin’,⁹⁰ the tone dramatically changed by 2018, when Biya implied that Europe’s attitudes towards both ‘migrants and refugees’ oppose values of ‘humanity’:

They are locked up in camps, huge sums of money are extorted from them to get a place on makeshift boats, and they are even sold as slaves. Do these people not have the right to be treated as human beings?⁹¹

‘One of the greatest scandals of the 21st century’, the inhumane treatment of those seeking refuge in Europe is evoked to highlight the failure of international community;⁹² that ‘the Mediterranean Sea [has turned] into a vast, hideous cemetery at the dawn of the 21st century’ is highlighted to point to the international community falling short in its ‘duty’ to resolve ‘tensions between major powers’.⁹³ These remarks are further juxtaposed with Cameroon’s efforts in welcoming refugees from neighbouring countries, revealing perceptions of hypocrisy and inconsistency between Europe’s rhetoric of human rights and their actual policies towards asylum seekers.

Race and racial hierarchies emerge as key reference points when highlighting such hypocrisy, evoked by those across the political spectrum. Explaining that ‘we have cried for the UN and Britain to come and fix what they messed up from the very outset’, a member of an armed group Red Dragon decries: ‘those people first of all don’t care about black people. Black lives do not matter to those white people. We have seen from Rwanda and other places.’⁹⁴ Narratives of an interlocutor who would be considered much more ‘moderate’ by the international community are notably similar; a civil society figure who regularly visits Europe and is considered a potential Track-2 actor recounts how they encounter racial hierarchies during these trips:

In Europe, because of our skin colour, it seems like they think we are all bad, dangerous, criminal or something. There are good and bad people from Africa, just like here. You need to treat people with dignity and respect. As much as they pretend and act like we are the same, we are not treated the same.⁹⁵

The contrast between the world’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and that towards conflicts in Africa is another recent example that is invoked by Cameroonians to point to the hypocrisy of the international community. Referring to the stark difference in the levels of attention and financial resources, Cameroonian government officials both privately and publicly speak of their perceptions that the West is unwilling to dedicate substantive resources towards resolving conflicts in Africa. Shortly after Switzerland hosted the first Ukraine Recovery Conference in July 2022, a senior government official in Cameroon pointed to the international community’s double standards, a view that was repeatedly echoed in Cameroonian media in the ensuing weeks: ‘They think a cheap solution will work in Africa … while the war is raging on in Ukraine, the international community is discussing and putting money towards reconstruction plans. But in Africa, they want a peace agreement’, but not reconstruction.⁹⁶

The West’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine also serves as a reference point in the separatist movement’s discourse to point to the perceived hypocrisy and the discrepancy between the West’s rhetoric and practice. Emma Osong, a member of the Ambazonia Coalition Team that was one of the main stakeholders representing the pro-independence movement in the Swiss process, explicitly speak of the ‘double standards in the international order’ when it comes to their positions vis-à-vis what she describes as a liberation struggle in the former Southern Cameroons, compared to the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

The entire civilised world has rallied around Ukraine … Now, the voices of Southern Cameroons/Ambazonians have been crying out to the world that we are under attack and what have we got as response? Thoughts and prayers and some diplomatic language designed to ease the consciences of those in power.⁹⁷

Cognisant of the pervasiveness of such widely shared perceptions, the Cameroonian state effectively exercises its agency, instrumentalises these discourses, and frames its actions as resisting the hierarchical and hypocritical world order. In fact, an awareness of hypocrisy in the world order has deep roots in the Cameroonian public consciousness; as several interlocutors reminded me, pictures of children who died while attempting to reach European shores that shocked the conscience of many in the West were also widely circulated in their places of origin, including Cameroon, reminding them of Africans’ long history of being denied their dignity.⁹⁸ These sentiments are then easily mobilised and instrumentalised as an effective justification of behaviour to the domestic audience: refusing to engage in the Swiss process was at once framed – and was met with significant resonance – as resisting foreign imposition, calling out the West’s double standards, and contesting their expected subservient position in the world order.

Implications for the Swiss facilitation process

It is against the backdrop of such perceptions of the world order, marked by hierarchy and hypocrisy, that the Swiss facilitation process became interpreted in Cameroon. Since sites of mediation not only are occasions deliberating the end of violence but are also where actors position themselves under the world’s spotlight, such pre-existing perceptions conditioned how different Cameroonian actors ranked their priorities in these interactions and engaged with the process.

The Swiss facilitation officially become known to the world in June 2019 when the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) released an announcement that ‘at the request of the parties, Switzerland is acting as a facilitator in the crisis in north-western and south-western Cameroon’, while referring to prior discussions that had taken place.⁹⁹ This, the logic goes, puts Switzerland in a unique position to act as a mediator. A similar assumption is repeated in its Sub-Saharan Africa Strategy 2021–24: ‘it never acted as a colonial power and is hence perceived in a differentiated manner’ to European powers who had formal colonies.¹⁰⁰ These self-perceptions have persisted despite African actors expressing otherwise since at least the latter half of the 20th century; when for example in the 1960s Switzerland refused to reduce economic ties with the white minority regimes in Southern Africa, many African countries, including Cameroon, accused Swiss policymakers of ‘using neutrality as a smokescreen for economic interests and racism’.¹⁰¹

The disconnect between Switzerland’s self-perception and how Cameroonians popularly see Switzerland is a testament to how highly consequential aspects of the relationship between the mediator and the ‘mediated’ can go unnoticed by the former unless explicit attention is paid to identities and worldviews. In the absence of sufficient understanding of different worldviews, it is unsurprising that the Cameroonian state’s behaviour vis-à-vis the Swiss process was at times described by the facilitation team and the broader Western diplomatic community as ‘irrational’, ‘stubborn’, or ‘overly sensitive’.¹⁰² Indeed, such characterisations are reflective of the tendency in the still largely Western-dominated professionalised field of mediation that has been quick to label something as ‘radical’ or ‘even retrograde’, without acknowledging that these judgements themselves are rooted in a particular worldview.¹⁰³ Seen through the lens of race and eurocentrism, for a field that emphasises mutual understanding and dialogue, mediators’ assumptions of conflict parties – especially when located outside the West – have too closely mirrored the problematic words and emotions that have ‘stuck’ to black and brown people through centuries of hierarchising discourses.¹⁰⁴

Marching towards emergence: Showcasing strength and saving face in relation to the Swiss process

What did this mean for the Swiss facilitation efforts around the Anglophone Crisis? It is indisputable that the Swiss process was challenged from the outset for a variety of reasons, many outside their control. The lack of clarity surrounding their mandate to mediate as well as the lack of a written mandate, for one, undermined their credibility among certain leaders of the pro-independence movements.¹⁰⁵ Similarly, the Cameroonian government’s self-perceived advantage on the battlefield, the unwavering support that the government enjoyed from France, and the limited threat that the crisis was believed to pose to the regime all certainly worked against Yaoundé’s meaningful participation in the Swiss process. This article argues that there is however another critical consideration beyond these explanations that merits attention: enthusiasm for the process was dampened early on by the perceived arrogance of the Swiss. The following section elaborates why such a perception had a level of influence far beyond what was expected by Western actors and cannot be simply brushed aside as being an overreaction.

As illustrated in the previous section, Cameroonians across the social spectrum are acutely aware of their unfair position on the hierarchical ladder of the global order, a recognition that has led to an incessant striving to become ‘un pays qui compte’ [a country that counts].¹⁰⁶ The tension between harbouring a sense of resentment towards the West and at the same time wanting to draw associations with or emulate the West manifests itself in various ways in Cameroonian politics and society. In everyday spaces, colourful mini-flags of European countries are a common sight in taxis across Cameroon.¹⁰⁷ ‘Pajero-crats’ symbolise a desire to consume Western goods and the belief that ‘everything that comes from the West is better, regardless of the actual quality of the product’;¹⁰⁸ ‘girls are made to hate their natural hair and are buying wigs … because they watch so much American TVs’.¹⁰⁹ A British diplomat recounted being ‘moved’ when they visited Buea and Bamenda by how much the people they met ‘still feel connected to the UK’; ‘some of them are up to date with British politics but they’ve actually never been to the UK’, which to the diplomat, pointed to the Anglophone population’s cultural attachment to Britain.¹¹⁰

These tensions are also visible at the formal state level. The fact that ‘achieving emergence’ has become a linchpin of Cameroon’s official rhetoric, as well as the frequent references to ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’, hints at a degree of internalisation of hierarchical and linear modes of seeing the world. The notion of ‘emergence’ appears at least 12 times in President Biya’s speeches between 2015 and 2022, with these references conditioned in forward-looking aspirational terms, such as ‘our march towards emergence’, ‘the course toward emergence’, and reaching ‘the threshold of emergence’. Beyond speeches, the 2017 batch of army graduates was given the name ‘peace and emergence batch’. The omnipresence of this rhetoric has led scholars to consider ‘the political, economic and social project of “emergence”’ in Cameroon today.¹¹¹ This preoccupation with emerging, an inherently relational concept concerning its position in the world order, is not so surprising given today’s convergence around the norms of modernity to an ‘astonishing’ degree and how most states in the world, including those who are hostile to the West, tend to evaluate themselves via the Western models of modernity and development.¹¹² Considering such preoccupation, it would be fair to say that Yaoundé hoped to capitalise on the Swiss facilitation as another site to advance its global relevance and status, not just as a potential pathway to end the violence.

Against this backdrop, what Cameroonians often refer to as showcasing strength acts a critical source of political currency in the country, while losing face is seen as a serious blow to one’s standing. These dynamics are at play both internationally and domestically. Domestically, engaging in violence and proving one’s capacity to inflict harm is certainly one way of showcasing strength; both the disproportionate crackdown on Anglophone protesters by the Cameroonian state security forces, as well as the atrocities committed by the separatist forces, can be partially interpreted as engaging in ‘proven tactics in Cameroon’ to assert their relevance.¹¹³ Concerning interactions with international actors, this translates into Yaoundé’s determined diplomacy to control the narrative around the Anglophone Crisis. Bent on portraying the conflict as an internal disturbance as part of its propaganda of stability,¹¹⁴ the Cameroonian authorities routinely accuse UN entities and INGOs of inflating the figures related to the humanitarian consequences of the conflict. This has pressurised some organisations into working with two separate sets of figures, one set of government-sanctioned numbers for public-facing documents and another to guide their activities on the ground.¹¹⁵ In other cases, the state has resorted to intimidating external actors perceived to be challenging the government’s narrative and approach to the conflict; authorisations to hold public marches aiming to draw attention to the conflict are aggressively turned down with requesting institutions threatened,¹¹⁶ while several staff of INGOs were detained for months, accused of aiding secessionists.¹¹⁷ The importance placed on showcasing strength is also said to act as a psychological barrier to the very idea of peace talks for many within the government who ‘want to give an image of Almighty’¹¹⁸ and ‘cannot imagine sitting down with the separatists on the same table’.¹¹⁹

In light of such determined show of strength on the side of the government, seemingly minor blunders that occurred in the early months of the Swiss process had reverberating consequences for how the Cameroonian authorities perceived and approached the process; these perceptions were, however, ‘never’ voiced directly since that would risk ‘losing face’.¹²⁰ For one, the Swiss FDFA’s official press release announcing its role as a facilitator in the context caught certain several members of the government off guard, particularly those who saw high risks in formally recognising the process and unwittingly legitimising the separatist movement.¹²¹ While this is unsurprising when one considers the fragmentation in the top echelons of the Cameroonian state,¹²² this bred resentment among those – still influential figures in the government – who perceived the process to have been imposed on Cameroon.¹²³ Given pre-existing anxieties around the West’s imposition of their preferences with ‘colonial attitudes’, the perception of a Western state interfering in ‘internal affairs’ struck a particular nerve.¹²⁴

Adding to this, only a few days after the announcement, several dozen people of Cameroonian origin organised demonstrations against President Biya in front of the hotel he was staying at in Geneva. This led to violent clashes involving members of Cameroonian security forces, with a Swiss journalist attacked by the president’s security staff. Following this incident, the Swiss authorities reportedly asked President Biya to leave the country,¹²⁵ which in turn led to claims in the Cameroonian media that the president had been ‘chased from Switzerland’.¹²⁶ Considering how being ‘embarrassed’, closely associated with ‘losing face’,¹²⁷ is something to be absolutely avoided, these early developments seemed to have been sufficient signs for Yaoundé to conclude that the Swiss process may not serve its aspirations for status and prestige in the global stage, resulting in their aloof and ambiguous position vis-à-vis the process in the years to come. That the Swiss process coincided with frequent speculations over the well-being and capacity of President Biya, who was in his late 80s, likely would have also made showing strength particularly important to the Cameroonian government during this time, which in turn would have made these signs deeply alarming.

The Swiss ambassador’s efforts to diffuse the tension fell short of revitalising relations, and it is telling that the Cameroonian government never publicly acknowledged the Swiss process. These seemingly trivial incidents not only compromised the Cameroonian government’s ability to showcase strength both internationally and domestically but were also perceived to have humiliated the president. Combined with the deep-seated and acute understanding of the power asymmetries between Europe and Cameroon, as well as the perception of hypocrisy, this led some members of the Cameroonian government to depict the Swiss efforts as ‘arrogant’; these statements were frequently accompanied by comments that Switzerland failed to appoint an ambassador to Cameroon for over a year while the Swiss process was ongoing, suggesting that ‘they’re not taking us seriously’.¹²⁸ While it would be unfair to claim that this view is all-encompassing, it is nonetheless indicative of the widespread resentment and the difficulty in having a Western-led process based on genuine trust and credibility in Cameroonian, and perhaps more broadly African, contexts. Given Cameroon’s preoccupation with status and self-image, for Yaoundé, as important as addressing the violence in the Anglophone regions was the very act of showing strength to both the international and domestic audience through the mediation process. When it became clear that the Swiss process may work contrary to those desires and priorities, it quietly yet resolutely frustrated its efforts and refused to consider it as a viable route of engagement.

Conclusion

Bringing together the literatures on the world order and international peacemaking illustrates that understanding one’s conceptions of self in the world is certainly pertinent and consequential for mediation dynamics. How one sees the world affects how one acts within it; if hierarchy is perceived to be the rule of the game, desire to climb the so-called civilisational league table and assert its relevance in the global scene becomes a powerful driver of one’s behaviour.¹²⁹ Given that those who occupy the lower rungs of a hierarchy experience the stratification more acutely, examining Cameroon’s perceptions of Switzerland helps us to better understand their behaviour vis-à-vis the Swiss facilitation efforts. Considering Cameroon’s preoccupation with how it is perceived by the outside world, the Swiss process appears to have initially been perceived as a site where Yaoundé hoped to advance its status with respect to the audience of Europe, not just a potential route to end violence. When these expectations subsided, Yaoundé resorted to an attitude of avoidance, marked by silence and ambiguity. What within one – Western – worldview amounted to being stubborn and irrational, within another worldview could be considered a coherent and rational approach to resist and showcase strength in the face of a potential Western imposition, as well as to avoid losing face.

The disconnect between Switzerland’s self-perception and Cameroonians’ popular perceptions of Switzerland also underscores the need for a historically oriented assessment of a mediator’s strengths and weaknesses in any given context and an incorporation of worldviews in this understanding. There is no clean slate, so to speak, into which a mediator enters. Switzerland has been present in Cameroon for centuries, through missionary activities, trade relations, and migration agreements, to name a few engagements. Switzerland–Cameroon relations may be ‘good’, as claimed on the Swiss Foreign Ministry webpage, but they are still complicated by historical baggage. While representations of Western countries among Cameroonians, and likely in other African countries, are admittedly ‘internally incoherent’ – representing at once ‘a gateway to a brighter future’ and an object of distrust given ‘the history of unequal relations between whites and blacks’¹³⁰ – there are evidently good reasons to acknowledge and endeavour to address these perceptions when Switzerland decides to assume a role of a mediator in a given context. In fact, with growing public awareness of Switzerland’s intricate involvement in the colonial enterprise,¹³¹ it may be increasingly untenable to continue drawing its legitimacy as a mediator from Switzerland’s supposedly non-colonial history.

While this article discusses the perceptions of a European mediator in an African context, all mediating entities stand to have much to gain through critical self-reflexivity, in particular the kind of intersubjectivity that brings in ‘others’ in the assessment of the self.¹³² Moving away from a self-referential understanding of oneself, a sincere effort to understand the multifaceted, including uncomfortable, perceptions of oneself before and during acting as a mediator in a context would enable mediators to acquire a greater sense of self-awareness that seems key in what is by definition a relational exercise involving extremely high stakes. In circumstances where power asymmetries between conflict parties and mediators, as well as their positions in the global order, are stark, these reflections are even more paramount so as to avoid ‘sleepwalking into the civilising mission’.¹³³

Focusing on the site of peace mediation, the article has endeavoured to amplify the perspectives of those who have long been peripheralised in the study of IR and highlight Cameroonian agency within the hierarchical and hypocritical world order in which it finds itself today. In this regard, the article forms part of a wider effort to reclaim the concept of agency not just as the prerogative of the strong but as the weapon of the weak and to recognise multiple forms of agency in perhaps surprising acts of resistance against ‘great-power hypocrisy and dominance’.¹³⁴ While beyond the scope of the article, a more disaggregated analysis of the world order within what is present-day Cameroon is clearly merited. Research on the divergent views between former French and British colonies – the origins of the current conflict cleavage – between different regions of Cameroon with different political inclinations, and across different socioeconomic classes in a strictly hierarchical society, would yield important insights into Cameroonian politics and society. It would also deepen and add much-needed nuance to our understanding of the agency of differently positioned actors in parts of the world that have been marginalised in the study of IR in how they experience, interpret, and negotiate the world order.