Schools in French-speaking regions hosting the children are calling for peace so that schools closed in the troubled English-speaking regions can be reopened.

Treasure Fomunyuy, a 13-year-old who escaped from Cameroon’s English-speaking northwestern town of Kumbo a year ago after his school was torched by armed men, has joined 300 other school children at the Etoug Ebe government school in Yaounde to ask for closed schools in the English-speaking North West and South West regions to be reopened.

Mumah Bih Yvonne of the Cameroon Women’s Peace Movement is asking for the right of children to education to be respected on the Day of the African Child in commemoration of the June 16, 1976, street protests in South Africa against poor quality education there.

Asheri Kilo, the secretary of state in the Ministry of Basic Education, said the government is determined to educate all children, but added that some schools are constantly attacked, torched, looted or are occupied by separatists.

The separatists have blamed the military for torching schools and public buildings and said they will allow children to go to school only after the central government withdraws its troops from the English-speaking regions.