28/08/2026
Femicide in Cameroon: Is This the New Face of Manhood?
By F***y bessem , CEO, Favour Health Foundation (FHF)
A woman killed in a hotel room in Yaoundé. A student thrown from a moving vehicle in Mfoundi. A sixteen-year-old lured into the bush in Nyong-et-Kellé and never came home, a woman killed by her husband. In just twenty days this August, fourteen women lost their lives across Cameroon most of them at the hands of men who claimed to love them, know them, or simply desired them.
This is not a string of unrelated tragedies. It is a pattern, and the numbers confirm it.
Official government figures show femicide cases climbing from around 56 in 2023 to 77 in 2025, with the Ministry of Women's Empowerment and the Family reporting 50 more cases in just the first four months of 2026 alone a rise officials themselves describe as unbroken and, in their own words, "only the tip of the iceberg."
The Minister was candid about something else too: most of these women were killed by people they knew partners, family members, neighbors. This is not stranger danger. This is a crisis unfolding inside our homes, our relationships, our communities.
So we have to ask the uncomfortable question:
When did control, violence, and the taking of a woman's life become mistaken for manhood?
A Distorted Idea of Masculinity
No culture in Cameroon teaches that killing a woman is honorable. Yet the pattern of these deaths , jealousy, rejection, a partner's refusal to stay, a woman's independence , points to a distorted script many boys grow up absorbing,
that a man's worth is measured by his control over a woman, and that losing that control is a wound only violence can answer.
This is not manhood. It is its collapse. Real manhood protects, it does not punish.
It listens, it does not silence with a machete or a blade.
Until we as a society say this plainly and repeatedly , in our churches, our compounds, our schools, our chief's palaces , we will keep burying our daughters, sisters, and mothers while calling the men who killed them "heartbroken."
What Government Must Do
1) Cameroon does not currently have a law that names femicide as a distinct crime one rooted in gender-based hatred or control, carrying penalties that match its gravity. That has to change.
2) Pass a dedicated femicide law that recognizes gender-motivated killing as an aggravated crime, closing the loopholes that let "crimes of passion" reduce sentences for what are, in truth, executions.
3) Fast-track the judicial process for gender-based violence cases. Survivors and grieving families should not wait years, watching perpetrators walk free on bail while evidence and public attention fade.
4) Fund a national femicide and GBV data registry, updated and published regularly, so the country stops relying on activists and journalists to piece together the true scale of this crisis from scattered reports.
5) Resource protection infrastructure functioning emergency shelters, a real domestic violence hotline, trained police units in every region, not just Yaoundé and Douala
6) Hold law enforcement accountable when complaints of threats or prior abuse were filed and ignored before a killing occurred, as has happened in case after case.
What Community and Traditional Leaders Must Do
1) Laws alone will not save the next woman being followed home tonight. Prevention starts long before a courtroom , it starts in how we raise our sons.
2) Traditional and religious leaders must break the silence. When a chief, an imam, or a pastor stands up and says clearly that femicide has no place in our culture, it carries a weight that no government decree can match.
3) Stop trivializing domestic violence as a "private family matter." Every neighbor who stayed quiet while a woman was being beaten next door is part of the chain that too often ends in a funeral.
4) Invest in mentorship for boys and young men safe spaces where anger, rejection, and jealousy are worked through in conversation, not violence. Manhood needs to be re-taught, not just condemned
5) Support survivors publicly, not just privately. Communities that ostracize women who leave violent relationships push them back into danger; communities that protect them save lives.
Our Commitment at Favour Health Foundation
At FHF, we have always believed health is not just the absence of disease , it is the presence of safety, dignity, and community protection.
A woman cannot access the healthcare we work to bring closer to her if she does not live to seek it. This is why we are committed to weaving gender-based violence awareness into our community health outreach, training our volunteers to recognize warning signs, and partnering with local leaders across Buea and beyond to keep this conversation loud and unavoidable.
Femicide is not a women's issue we ask women to solve. It is a societal failure that demands men, government, and community leaders to act together, and now.
Every statistic in this article was a name, a family, a future. We owe them more than outrage. We owe them action.
Favour Health Foundation stands ready to work with government agencies, traditional authorities, and fellow civil society organizations to turn this tide. Silence has cost us too many lives already.
Favour Health Foundation (FHF),formerly FALCOH — Buea, Cameroon |
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