Crisis Resolution Mechanisms Among the Omvang (Eastern Cameroon): Traditional Diplomacy in the Service of Peace Promotion
Crisis Resolution Mechanisms Among the Omvang (Eastern Cameroon): Traditional Diplomacy in the Service of Peace Promotion

Summary/Abstract: This research aims to be a demonstrative approach to the anteriority of diplomatic practices in traditional African societies in general and in Eastern Cameroon in particular. It protests against the modern Eurocentric conception which implies that the resolution of international conflicts today is only an emanation of the action of the great powers or the repetition of traditional conflict resolution mechanisms. But it disappeared with the arrival of colonization. The hierarchical society set up by Chief Nkal Mentsouga where each member of the family had a considerable place and a well-defined role in promoting the peaceful management of disputes, succession crises and local politics for the benefit of social harmony, peace and concord. This text raises the problem of managing violence within primordial socio-cultural groups and seeks to show how these issues are expressed in realities more or less in terms of land problems and crises in a complex society of Eastern Cameroon. It emerges that the Omvang society before Nkal Mentsouga is of the lineage or segmentary type. Their institutions are identical to those of the fore st peoples, notably the Beti-Bulu-Fang. These peoples have imagined and applied mechanisms and power stratagems to ensure the most harmonious management possible of populations and property.

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