The conflict in the Northwest and Southwest regions and the fight against Boko Haram insurgencies in the Far Noth region were ranked in the 8th position amongst the most neglected displacement crises in the world in 2022.
This is contained in a report published by the Norwegian Refugee Council on June 1, 2023.
According to the report, three criteria were taken into consideration to measure the level of neglect. First was the lack of international political will characterized by the number of UN resolutions, peacekeeping missions, diplomatic will, or international discussions on these crises.
For this aspect, the NRC notes that “the political will of the international community to contribute to political solutions remained weak” and concluded that in the absence of an international initiative to find political solutions to the crisis the level of needs cannot show signs of improvement.
The second is the lack of media attention. The NRC notes that the level of media attention was about 0.5% in 2021, and remained very low in 2022.
The percentage was calculated by the number of media coverage against the number of people displaced by each crisis, using the latest figures from UNHCR and the NRC’s IDMC (Internal Travel Monitoring Centre)
The last is the lack of humanitarian funding. It highlighted that for the 2022 financial year, funding for the crisis remained limited, with international donors covering only 55% of the humanitarian response.
This was in a context where at the beginning of 2022, “3.9 million people in Cameroon needed help, a figure that rose to 4.7 million at the end of the year “the report revealed.
According to Human Rights Watch, as of August 2022, the 6 years conflict has recorded 598,000 displaced persons and at least 2 million people need humanitarian aid in these regions.
The UN estimates that Cameroon needs about 244 billion FCFA this year to help persons in all humanitarian crises including the Boko Haram insurgencies in the Far North, the influx of Central African refugees in the East, and the Anglophone conflict.
Source: Cameroon News Agency