Global Issues

Cameroon

• Cameroonian women lured to Europe by fraudulent internet marriage proposals or offers of domestic work, and become victims of forced labor or forced prostitution in Switzerland and France, with smaller numbers of cases in Russia.

• Cameroonian trafficking victims were reported in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Cyprus, Norway, and Senegal.

• 38.6% of women in Cameroon report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 13.9% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

• 52.5% of women report intimate partner and/or not-intimate-partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 16% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.

• 10.9% report abuse during pregnancy.

• A study conducted in 2009 reported the rapes of hundreds of thousands of young girls and women between 1970 and 2008.

• Due to social taboos on sexual violence, most rapes unreported.

 

Advocacy:

• Ministers of Social Affairs and Women’s Empowerment, with UNICEF, launched a nationwide sensitization campaign entitled “Campaign Against Sexual Exploitation and Traffic of Children” to build awareness on identification of traffickers

 

Sources: UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data:  Surveys  by  Country 2011; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report, U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011