This Country’s Humanitarian Emergency Was Named 2020’s Most Neglected Crisis

By: Marcus Day

Streets of Yaoundé by ludwig.troller

New York — For the second year in the row, Cameroon’s governance crisis has been named the most neglected emergency in the world by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s annual assessment. In total, 3.9 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance as a series of conflicts and migrant crises have destabilized a majority of the country.

What’s happening

Three crises in the West African country have pushed millions from their homes, creating one of the world’s worst and underreported humanitarian emergencies. 

An ongoing conflict in the country’s English-speaking west, known as the Ambazonian War, has raged for several years. The war between a French-speaking majority and English-speaking minority began in 2016 when the government cracked down on Anglophones protesting discrimination. The English-speaking population is now fighting for independence, although a COVID-19 ceasefire has paused hostilities.  

In the country’s north, Boko Haram, the Islamic terrorist group famous for menacing West Africa, has been a constant danger to the region’s residents. Most of the conflict comes as cross border raids staged from neighboring Chad and Nigeria, forcing thousands to flee their homes or endure the violence.  

The final crisis plaguing Cameroon is an ongoing refugee influx from the Central African Republic (CAR), a worn torn nation just east of Cameroon. The country erupted into civil conflict in late 2012 and despite multiple attempted ceasefires, steady conflict and instability has made the CAR one of the most dangerous countries in the world. There are almost 270,000 refugees from the CAR currently living in Cameroon, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).  

Three Criteria 

The NRC’s list of neglected crises is based on three criteria, comparing the traits between 40 different humanitarian disasters around the globe:

Political Neglect 

Cameroon has never maintained a large presence on the world stage. Its perceived geopolitical irrelevance has resulted in the international community’s weak will to bring about peace or invest adequate resources to abate the conflict. After multiple attempts, the sides have reached a ceasefire agreement, a success largely credited to the threat of COVID-19. Some doubt the ceasefire will hold following the pandemic.

Lack of media attention. 

Like many events on the African continent, Cameroon’s humanitarian issues have not received extensive coverage by most international media outlets, specifically those in the West. “Even when the media report on a conflict, the humanitarian situation for civilians may be overshadowed by coverage of war strategies, political alliances and fighting between armed groups. So the level of media attention is not necessarily proportional to the size of the crisis,” according to the NRC.

Lack of international aid. 

The international community has no consensus on how to precede with Cameroon’s internal crises and as result, the country has received little financial support. It wasn’t until 2019 that the Ambazonian War received international attention and aid was slow to follow.  

“Every year, the United Nations and its humanitarian partners launch funding appeals to cover people’s basic needs in countries affected by large crises. But the extent to which these appeals are met varies greatly. We used the percentage that each appeal was covered in 2019 to indicate levels of economic support,” a representative for NRC wrote. They found the economic aid for Cameroon to be negligible.

Some support for the separatists and citizens effected has come through means of freezing aid to the Cameroonian government, who has been accused of a multitude of human rights violations. In February 2019, the United States cut $17 million worth of military aid to the country due to the government’s human rights record. Last year, the Canadian government sent $6.65 million in humanitarian aid to alleviate the Anglophone Crisis’s consequences, one of the few countries to do so.

As of now, a majority of the external assistance is coming from non-governmental organizations such as the Norwegian Refugee Council and the International Rescue Committee. 

“The deep crises represented by millions of displaced Africans are yet again the most underfunded, ignored and deprioritized in the world,” says Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). “Despite facing a tornado of emergencies, their SOS calls for help fall on deaf ears,” he went on. 

Cameroon was followed on the list by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Venezuela, Mali, South Sudan, Nigeria, Central African Republic and Niger. 9 out of 10 countries on this list are in Africa.