Cameroon

The conflict in Cameroon escalated significantly in 2018 and spread throughout the regions of Northeast and Southeast Cameroon. The conflict in Anglophone Cameroon began in late 2016 when a series of protests and general strikes led by lawyers, teachers and other civil-society organisations sought to foreground issues affecting Cameroon’s English-speaking citizens. The government has relied heavily on Cameroon’s military police and elements of its elite military force, the Rapid Response Brigade, to suppress the insurgency. The Southern Cameroons Defence Forces is a smaller armed separatist group of approximately 100 members that operates mainly in Meme Division, Southwest Region, and is led from abroad by Ebenezer Derek Mbongo Akwanga. Approximately 12 self-defence groups operate throughout Southwest and Northwest Cameroon, formed following a call from the self-proclaimed interim government in February 2018 to begin an ‘era of self defence’. The conflict’s root causes date back to the colonial history of Cameroon.