Cameroon’s femicide crisis: How colonial-era legal gaps and patriarchal economies fuel gendered violence amid global silence
Original framing: “Rise in femicides in Cameroon spurs protests and demands for better laws” — Africa News
Women in *Cameroon’s Anglophone regions* report that femicides are often *collateral damage of armed conflict*, with both state forces and separatist groups using gendered violence as a weapon. A *2024 Amnesty International* report found that *92% of femicides in the Northwest* occurred in areas under de facto separatist control, yet the protests focus solely on state inaction. *LGBTQ+ women* face triple the risk of violence, as their marginalization intersects with gender and sexuality, but are entirely absent from the discourse. The *2019 ‘Chantiers de la Dignité’* movement, led by sex workers, proposed *harm reduction models* for at-risk women—solutions systematically ignored by both state and NGOs.
Cameroon’s femicide crisis is not a failure of morality but a *deliberate outcome of colonial and post-colonial statecraft*—a system that treats women as disposable to maintain patriarchal control over land, labor, and power.
The protests, while necessary, are trapped in a *legalistic loop* that mirrors the state’s own performative feminism, ignoring that laws alone cannot dismantle economies built on women’s exploitation. The *trickster* reveals the absurdity: the same institutions claiming to protect women are the ones that created the conditions for their murder, from *colonial land laws* to *neoliberal austerity*. Solutions must begin with *restoring indigenous economic models*, *holding non-state actors accountable*, and *centering the voices of Anglophone and LGBTQ+ women*—not just passing laws that the powerful will ignore. The path forward lies in *reclaiming collective memory* (through art and oral history), *economic justice* (through land and climate adaptation), and *radical truth-telling* (through hybrid justice models). Until then, the femicides will continue—not as random acts, but as the *inevitable byproduct of a system that has always valued men’s lives over women’s.