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After almost 50 years of taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees from various neighboring states, Cameroon is shredding its reputation as a generous refugee-hosting country. Working to push back Nigeria’s militant Islamist group Boko Haram, which has secured an increasingly violent foothold in northern Cameroon since 2013, Cameroon’s military deems tens of thousands of Nigerian asylum seekers a threat to their security goal and has carried out a policy of mass forced return of this vulnerable population. The Cameroonian military’s aim seems to be to clear Nigerians out of the country and dissuade other would-be asylum seekers from seeking Cameroon’s protection.

Since early 2015, the Cameroonian authorities have summarily deported at least 100,000 Nigerians living in remote border areas back to war, displacement, and destitution in Nigeria’s Borno State. At least 4,402 are known to have been deported in the first seven and a half months of 2017. In carrying out these deportations, Cameroonian soldiers have frequently used extreme physical violence. Some, including children, weakened after living for months or years without adequate food and medical care in border areas, have died during or just after the deportations, and children have been separated from their parents.

The forced returns are a flagrant breach of the principle of nonrefoulement, binding on Cameroon under national Cameroonian as well as international law. They are also being carried out in defiance of UNHCR’s late 2016 plea to all governments not to return anyone to northeastern Nigeria “until the security and human rights situation has improved considerably.”

Since early 2015, Cameroon’s army has been aggressively screening newly arriving Nigerians at the border, subjecting some to torture and other forms of abuse, and containing them in far-flung and under-serviced border villages and informal refugee settlements, to which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been denied access. This policy of blocking asylum seekers from accessing protection has made it easier for Cameroon to deport them.

About 70,000 refugees able to reach Cameroon’s only designated camp for Nigerian refugees, in Minawao, have also faced violence at the hands of Cameroonian soldiers, have had limited access to food and water and are subject to abusive restrictions on their right to free movement. In April and May 2017, 13,000 returned from the camp to Nigeria, some of whom were killed in early September after Boko Haram attacked the Banki displacement camp where many had ended up.

To avoid complying with their basic obligations under refugee law to provide protection and assistance for tens of thousands of Nigerians seeking asylum in Cameroon, the authorities have refused to allow UNHCR to register their asylum claims and to process them for refugee protection in the border areas or, except in a few exceptional cases, to arrange for their transfer to Minawao where UNHCR can register them.

As of mid-2017, UNHCR had only been given sporadic access to some border communities to carry out basic pre-registration procedures, likely leaving tens of thousands of asylum seekers without access to protection and putting them at risk of unlawful forced return. The agency has repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked Cameroon to set up new transit centers to register newly arriving asylum seekers.

After staying publicly silent on the situation for two years, in late March 2017, UNHCR started to publicly criticize the authorities for their mass forced refugee returns. The decision to go public was triggered by ongoing forced returns, even after Cameroon had signed an agreement in early March with Nigeria and UNHCR committing both countries to voluntary refugee returns. As of mid-July, evidence on the ground confirmed that Cameroon has continued to unlawfully deport hundreds of asylum seekers at a time, although formally the authorities deny this.

On one occasion in late June 2017, the Nigerian authorities responded to Cameroon’s pressure by sending military vehicles over the border to help Cameroon deport almost 1,000 asylum seekers. Nigeria thereby became complicit in the unlawful forced return of its own citizens.

In late June and July 2017, Human Rights Watch interviewed 61 refugees and asylum seekers in Nigeria about the abuses they had suffered in Cameroon.

Those previously living in Cameroon’s border areas, particularly in or near Kolofata and Mora, spoke of shocking levels of physical violence perpetrated by Cameroonian soldiers between early 2015 and April 2017. They described how soldiers tortured and assaulted them and dozens of others on arrival and during screening procedures, accusing them of belonging to Boko Haram or being “Boko Haram wives.” They said soldiers closely controlled their daily movements, beating and extorting money under threat of detention and deportation as they tried to collect firewood. UNHCR says it has received similar reports from asylum seekers living in the border areas.

Asylum seekers also described to Human Rights Watch poor humanitarian conditions in the border areas, including limited access to food, and how they struggled to keep themselves and their families alive in the face of destitution exacerbated by exploitation. One woman described how soldiers promised to give women food and not deport them in exchange for sex with them.

Every person interviewed said that during their time in border villages, Cameroonian soldiers regularly rounded up dozens or hundreds of fellow asylum seekers, brutally beat them with wooden sticks and metal poles to force them onto trucks, and deported them. Some said they witnessed soldiers deporting dozens of groups involving hundreds of people. After living in constant fear of deportation, they then described how they suffered the same fate. Many said they saw other deportees, including malnourished children, die during their deportation.

Refugees previously and currently living in the Minawao refugee camp told Human Rights Watch about severe violence they suffered in the camp, particularly in 2015 when soldiers beat them and hundreds of other refugees during food distribution in the camp, resulting in deaths and injuries. Some also said soldiers severely beat them and others in 2016 and 2017, for example when they intercepted them as they attempted to collect firewood outside the camp, and tried to extort money from them.

Refugees who had lived in the camp spoke of poor humanitarian conditions there since 2015, including a reduction in food rations and a lack of clean water. Some also said they struggled to access adequate healthcare. Many said these conditions had pushed thousands to leave the camp and return to Nigeria in April and May 2017. However, in April 2017 water access significantly improved and the United Nations (UN) said it hoped to resume full food rations in October for three months.

On August 7, Human Rights Watch wrote to Cameroon’s Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization outlining this report’s findings and requesting comment. As of mid-September, we had received no response.

After the deportees are forced back to their country, the Nigerian army transfers them to militarized displacement camps or villages in Borno State where conditions are dire, and women and girls face sexual exploitation. These sites are in the midst of the ongoing conflict between Nigeria’s armed forces and Boko Haram which has displaced about 2 million other Nigerian civilians struggling to survive the violence.

The UN and aid groups in Nigeria have repeatedly appealed for an end to forced returns from Cameroon, saying it is too dangerous and that they do not have the capacity to respond to the massive needs of returnees. They have also called on the Nigerian authorities—who have repeatedly overstated limited improvements in the security situation in Borno—not to carry out plans to set up new displacement camps in insecure areas to deal with the mass returns from Cameroon.

International refugee and human rights law prohibits refoulement, the forcible return of refugees to persecution, and the forcible return of anyone, regardless of their legal status, to a real risk of torture. In addition, African regional refugee law prohibits the return of civilians to situations of generalized violence, such as the one that exists in northeastern Nigeria. Cameroon has bound itself to these prohibitions and incorporated them into Cameroonian law.

Cameroon has the right to regulate the presence of non-nationals on its territory and to prevent certain people from entering or remaining in Cameroon—including those viewed as a threat to its national security, such as members of Boko Haram. The authorities also have an obligation to carefully investigate any attacks carried out in the Far North Region by suspected Cameroonian or Nigerian members of Boko Haram.

However, Cameroon’s right to prevent individuals shown to pose a security threat from entering Cameroon does not mean the authorities may close their borders to asylum seekers, or block them from seeking asylum in Cameroon and then summarily deport them, or registered refugees, back to Nigeria. The failure to protect refugees and other abuses documented in this report appear to be driven by the Cameroonian government’s arbitrary decision to punish Nigerian refugees, based solely on their nationality, for Boko Haram attacks carried out in Cameroon’s Far North Region and to discourage Nigerians from seeking asylum in Cameroon.

Cameroon is also bound by its own laws and international law not to limit asylum seekers’ and refugees’ freedom of movement. However, the mid 2015 decision to require Nigerian refugees to live and remain in the Minawao camp to receive refugee status and assistance fails to comply with the limited permitted exceptions to this rule.

As of late July 2017, international donors had funded less than ten percent of UNHCR’s appeals for their Cameroonian operations on behalf of refugees from the Central African Republic and Nigeria. This significant shortfall risks sending Cameroon a message that donor governments do not care what happens to Nigerian refugees and that Cameroon should deal with the significant challenges it faces in protecting and assisting refugees on its own. This is unlikely to encourage the authorities to be tolerant of Nigerian refugees and stop abusing them.

To help put an immediate end to the abuses described in this report, the Cameroonian and Nigerian authorities, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the United Nations, including UNHCR, and donor countries should take a number of urgent steps.

The Cameroonian authorities should immediately instruct the military authorities to stop deporting Nigerian asylum seekers and refugees and should investigate and prosecute any soldiers who have committed acts of violence against asylum seekers and other abuses. They should swiftly register Nigerian asylum seekers, recognize those who pass security screening procedures as refugees, and let them live in Cameroonian communities or refugee camps that respect their right to free movement.

In line with UNHCR’s official position on returns to Nigeria, the Nigerian authorities should unambiguously and publicly recognize that the security and humanitarian situation in Borno State means that it remains unsafe for Nigerian refugees to return from Cameroon.

UNHCR should maintain its June 2017 decision to publicly report every month on forced returns from Cameroon and should include in those reports information on Cameroonian military abuses against Nigerian refugees and asylum seekers. UNHCR should also transparently report on the extent to which the Cameroonian authorities allow UNHCR to register asylum seekers living in Cameroon’s border areas with Nigeria and assist them in those areas or transport them to the Minawao camp.

The Special Rapporteur on Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Internally Displaced Persons and Migrants in Africa of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights should call on Cameroon to immediately end the abuses set out in this report, request to visit Cameroon’s border areas with Nigeria and the Minawao camp, and issue a public report on the extent of abuses faced by asylum seekers and refugees.

Finally, donor governments should immediately improve on their extremely weak response in 2017 to UNHCR’s financial appeals for Nigerian refugees in Cameroon and other countries in the region. They should also raise the abuses set out in this report with the Cameroonian authorities, call on them to put an immediate end to these practices and to fully cooperate with UNHCR in assisting and protecting all Nigerian asylum seekers and refugees in Cameroon.