The word ‘femicide’ does not exist in Cameroonian law. Not an offence, not an aggravating factor: these killings are tried as ordinary homicide, often filed under ‘crime of passion’ — a label that hands the killer an emotional excuse.
Between August 17 and 25, 2026, eight women were killed in Douala and Yaoundé within eight days: a pregnant woman at Mokolo market, another the next day in Nsam, Modestine T. beaten to death by her husband in Logpom, Créscence Merline stabbed in a Yaoundé hotel. The press called them ‘tragedies’; it should have said femicides.
The numbers are tracked: roughly 50 women killed in 2023, 67 in 2024, 77 in 2025 — over 200 in three years according to cross-checked counts from civil-society groups and the National Forum against Femicide. In the first eight months of 2026, the state itself recorded about 50 cases between January and April, alongside 166 rapes; advocacy groups already put the 2026 death toll above 60. On average, a woman is killed every 72 hours.
That figure is a floor, not a ceiling. Few complaints are filed, follow-up is thin, and there is no dedicated official count: what isn’t counted doesn’t exist politically.
In nearly every recorded case, the killer is a spouse or ex-partner. Femicide rarely comes out of nowhere: it follows months of control, humiliation, beatings and threats that those around the victim had often already seen.
Since 2023, the government has promised a bill on violence against women; three years on, the text is still sitting with the Prime Minister’s office. On June 16, 2026, MP Joshua Osih (SDF) tabled five bills, including one on preventing femicide — his party accuses the ruling RDPC of blocking it from the agenda. After August’s deadly week, the government promised reforms; promising isn’t legislating.
Latin America is a cautionary tale: femicide has been on the books there for nearly twenty years (Costa Rica in 2007, Mexico in 2012) without bending the curve — Mexico still averaged 7.5 femicides a day in 2018. A law alone, without resources, becomes an alibi. But without a law or a count, there isn’t even a curve to watch.
The concrete steps exist: write femicide into the penal code, set up an independent observatory modelled on Mexico’s, fund the emergency protection orders and hotlines demanded by LEFE and Nouveaux Droits de l’Homme, and train police and magistrates to take the first complaint seriously.
Cameroon counts its road deaths with precision. It still has no official register for women killed at home — and until that count exists, August’s deadly week will repeat itself without even being named as what it is.
