Click to expand Image © 2026 Diana Ejaita for Human Rights Watch Women and girls in Cameroon face persistent domestic violence and gender discrimination without meaningful protection or access to justice.Entrenched systemic gender inequality, discriminatory laws, and weak institutions, exacerbated by chronic underinvestment in prevention and survivor support, fuels the violence. The government needs to urgently reform discriminatory family laws, update and adopt the long-delayed Family Code, establish a coordinated national response to domestic violence, and ensure services are accessible across the country. (Nairobi) – Cameroon’s government has blatantly failed to meet its decade-old commitment to substantially reduce violence against women and girls, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The failure leaves victims and survivors exposed to harm without meaningful protection or access to justice, even as officials acknowledge that violence against women and girls is worsening.The 75-page report, “‘I Live in Constant Peril:’ Discrimination, Lack of Economic Autonomy and Violence Against Women in Cameroon,” documents widespread violence against women, including physical, psychological, and economic abuse, in most cases by husbands and intimate partners. Researchers found that physical and economic abuse was used to restrict access to financial resources, social security, employment, property, and economic independence. These abuses are not isolated incidents but are rooted in entrenched gender inequality, discriminatory laws, and weak institutions, exacerbated by the government’s chronic underinvestment in prevention and survivor support. June 24, 2026 “I Live in Constant Peril” Discrimination, Lack of Economic Autonomy and Violence Against Women in Cameroon Download the full report in English “Violence against women is not simply the result of abusive actions by individuals: it is enabled and compounded by Cameroon’s discriminatory laws and institutional failures that leave survivors without protection,” said Juliana Nnoko, senior women’s rights adviser at Human Rights Watch. “The government urgently needs laws, policies, and services that reflect the realities of domestic violence, prioritize prevention, and support survivors in accessing justice.”Between September and December 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed 60 women who had experienced domestic violence and/or discrimination, as well as three religious leaders and seven government officials responsible for social service delivery in Maroua, Douala, and Buea. Researchers also reviewed several government policies and reports on gender-based violence.Many of those interviewed experienced economic impacts that trapped them in abusive relationships due to their lost access to income, land, housing, paid employment, and social security. Husbands had sold jointly acquired property without the wife’s consent or compensation, sabotaged employment opportunities, cancelled business leases, and destroyed work equipment.One woman said she spent nearly three decades confined to the family’s compound, forbidden from leaving, speaking to others, or pursuing her desire to start a small business, and beaten if she disobeyed.Women who had sought help from authorities described being pressured to reconcile with their abusers, being blamed for the violence, or facing retaliation after reporting abuse. Several said their husbands had ties to police or local officials, making reporting even more dangerous and hopeless.“I went to the police station, thinking they would summon [my husband],” said Yvonne D., a 54-year-old data processor in Douala, whose full name, as with others, is held for her protection. “Instead, the policeman listened, did not take notes, smiled, and just said ‘Truly! Women!’ When I returned home and my husband found out I had gone to the police, he beat me severely in front of our children and threw me out of our home.”Accountability remains limited, reinforcing a climate of impunity. “I was told to persevere [in preserving the marriage] for my children by family, social affairs, and police,” said Rosalind E., a 44-year-old hairdresser in Buea. When she went to the police, a female commissioner advised her “to drop it because it is a family matter.” The state prosecutor also advised her to drop the case after her husband was arrested because he was not willing to cooperate with the police.Because of structural discrimination in Cameroon, women face systematic dispossession of land and property by male relatives and in-laws, even when they have documents proving ownership. Brothers and uncles exploit their authority to seize or sell land, often disregarding deceased parents’ wishes, while widows are intimidated into relinquishing rights.All the older women interviewed described experiencing multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination, including barriers to inheriting from their parents, discriminatory matrimonial property rights during marriage and widowhood, and gendered obstacles to accessing pensions and essential public services. Despite court cases and official papers, the women remain vulnerable and deprived of their right to property.In 2011, the Cameroonian government pledged to combat gender-based violence including cutting the prevalence in half. In the subsequent 15 years, however, the government has failed to take meaningful steps to fulfil this commitment. A revised Family Code, a key legal reform needed to protect women’s rights and comply with Cameroon’s obligations under international law, has sat in draft form for more than 20 years. Cameroon has no national policy or guidelines on domestic violence.The current legal framework governing family relations contains discriminatory provisions that designate husbands as heads of household, and the primary managers of matrimonial property. These provisions weaken women’s decision-making power over place of residence, employment, and property, trapping women in abusive marriages.Police, healthcare providers, and judicial officials are ill-equipped to protect survivors or hold abusers accountable. The government has no comprehensive, coordinated system for collecting or disaggregating data on gender-based violence, leaving the true scale of the problem, including the prevalence of domestic violence and even femicide, largely invisible to policymakers and the public.Cameroon is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the African Union’s Maputo Protocol, both of which require governments to eliminate discriminatory laws, prevent violence against women and girls, and ensure effective remedies for survivors. These obligations include taking steps to respect, protect, and fulfill women’s rights to bodily integrity, nondiscrimination, and economic, social, and cultural rights, including their rights to property, housing, health, social security, work, and an adequate standard of living. Domestic violence is not a private family matter: it is a serious human rights violation that governments have an obligation to prevent and address, Human Rights Watch said.Cameroon’s international obligations require legal reform, sustained funding for survivor-centered services, and meaningful accountability for abusers. The Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement and its chairman, Paul Biya, have governed Cameroon for more than four decades. This is not a case of successive governments failing to act: it is the same party, and the same president, bearing uninterrupted responsibility for the absence, for decades, of meaningful legislative action to eliminate violence against women.“The government should urgently reform discriminatory family laws, update and adopt the long-delayed Family Code, establish a coordinated national response to domestic violence, and ensure services are accessible across the country,” Nnoko said. “Being a woman in Cameroon should not mean having to experience discrimination and violence.”