Fear Grips Cameroon as Killings of Women Surge

Cameroon is gripped by fear and mounting outrage as the killing of women continues to rise across the country. Officials say at least 50 women were killed between January and April this year alone a toll that sits within a documented upward trend running from 50 cases in 2023, to 67 in 2024, to 77 in 2025, according to government figures. The crisis deepened further in late August, when eight women were killed in a single week, prompting a wave of public anger and renewed scrutiny of how the state is responding.

A Pattern, Not Isolated Incidents
The latest confirmed case came on a Tuesday in September, when a 44-year-old woman was stabbed to death in a hotel room in the capital, Yaoundé; a 22-year-old suspect was later arrested.

Most of the killings recorded this year are linked to domestic and intimate-partner violence, occurring in different parts of the country rather than concentrated in any single region. Cameroon's Minister for Women's Empowerment and the Family, Marie-Thérèse Abena Ondoa, has publicly described the rise as "worrying," while telling parliament in June that domestic femicide cases have climbed sharply since 2023.

Her ministry has gone further, warning that the official figures likely represent only "the tip of the iceberg" an acknowledgment that many cases of gender-based violence in Cameroon go unreported or unrecorded altogether.

CameroonianCameroonian footballer Nchout Ajara was among the public voices to speak out after the August spike, arguing that being a woman in the country should never carry this level of risk, and that silence in the face of the killings amounts to complicity.

The opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) has accused the government of passivity, describing the recurrence of domestic femicides as a tragedy the state has failed to confront with urgency.

Families Left Behind
Behind each statistic is a family now living with sudden, violent loss often of a mother, sister, or daughter killed by someone close to her. Officials and rights researchers have noted that a large share of these killings are committed not by strangers but by intimate partners or family members, sometimes in the presence of the victim's own children.

That pattern places the crisis squarely within a global one: an estimated 51,100 women and girls were killed worldwide, roughly one every ten minutes, underscoring that Cameroon's crisis, while acute, is part of a far larger failure to protect women from those closest to them.

Viviane Tathi, whose organisation documents femicide cases in Cameroon, has raised doubts about whether meaningful legislative action will come quickly enough. She has pointed out that the country's final parliamentary session of the year, due in November, is focused on budgetary matters, leaving uncertainty over whether a proposed bill addressing gender-based violence will be prioritised.

She has also called for the creation of a dedicated court to handle family disputes that escalate into domestic violence a structural gap she argues has allowed cases to fall through the cracks of an overstretched justice system.

The Legal Debate: New Law, or Better Enforcement?

The killings have reignited a debate over whether Cameroon's problem is a legal vacuum or a failure of enforcement. Cameroon does not currently have a standalone criminal offence specifically for gender-based violence, and the term "femicide" itself is not recognised in the country's Penal Code a gap campaigners say obscures the true scale and gendered nature of the killings in official records.

The government has responded by working on a bill to create a distinct offence, with the Minister for Women's Empowerment telling lawmakers in June that the legislation was being finalised.

But critics argue that new legislation, on its own, will not solve the crisis.

Commentators have pointed out that Cameroon's existing Penal Code already criminalises murder and its aggravated forms with severe sanctions, arguing that the deeper failure lies in slow legal procedures, weak enforcement, and a climate of impunity rather than an absence of law.

Human rights researchers similarly describe violence against women in Cameroon as rooted in entrenched gender inequality and discriminatory practices, compounded by chronic underinvestment in prevention and survivor support conditions that allow perpetrators to escape accountability even where laws technically exist.

A Test of Political Will
Cameroon's president convened a national security meeting in August that addressed the rise in killings, a sign that the crisis has reached the highest levels of government attention. Yet with parliament's remaining 2026 session focused on the budget, and campaigners uncertain whether reform legislation will pass this year, the coming months will test whether that attention translates into action.

For the families of the women already lost, and for those who fear becoming the next statistic, the question is no longer whether Cameroon acknowledges the crisis officials already have but whether the state is prepared to enforce the protection its laws are supposed to guarantee.

Mustapha Bature Sallama
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Analysis,

International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding. ( USIP)

[email protected]
+233555275880

Sources
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Naija Feminists Media, "Femicide: Eight Women Killed in a Week, Cameroonian Footballer Nchout Ajara Cries Out": https://naijafeministsmedia.org.ng/femicide-eight-women-killed-in-a-week-cameroonian-footballer-nchout-ajara-cries-out/

The Guardian Post (Cameroon), "Femicide in Cameroon: The Law Is Not the Problem; the Failure to Use It, Is!": https://theguardianpostcameroon.com/post/7899/fr/homeuse

Right for Education, "Femicide in Cameroon: An Alarming Situation with Multiple Causes," Sept 2026: https://rightforeducation.org/2026/09/10/femicide-in-cameroon-an-alarming-situation/

Original reporting referenced: BBC Hausa, produced by Makuochi Okafor.