A new report released by the Norwegian Refugee Council has placed Cameroon at the top of an annual list of the most neglected global displacement crises, highlighting a sharp decline in international support.
Despite hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people, the situation in the country has received limited international attention, insufficient humanitarian funding and minimal political engagement, according to the NGO.
"It’s a case study in global neglect," Laila Matar, NRC's director of communications, told RFI. "There’s little media coverage, no meaningful diplomatic engagement and chronic underfunding. People are really struggling to survive."
Cameroon is grappling with humanitarian emergencies driven by three distinct situations – violence in the far north, ongoing conflict in the anglophone regions, and an influx of refugees from neighbouring Central African Republic.
These crises have left the country’s services overwhelmed and under-resourced.
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According to the NRC’s report, covering 2024, 11 percent of Cameroon’s population now faces acute food insecurity.
"1.4 million children are crammed into poorly maintained and overcrowded classrooms," said Matar. "There’s simply no meaningful investment coming in from the global community."
Cameroon’s 2024 humanitarian response plan was only 45 percent funded, leaving a gap of more than $202 million (almost €178m).
Alongside Cameroon, the NRC’s report highlights nine other displacement crises suffering from similar neglect and lack of aid funding, including those in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Burkina Faso, each grappling with ongoing conflict.
'Inward-looking policies'
To explain this reduced support and lack of engagement, Matar says: "Donor fatigue is certainly a factor. But more worrying is the shift we’re seeing from international solidarity to more inward-looking, security-focused policies in countries that used to be generous donors."
Several developed countries have made significant cuts to their overseas aid budgets.
France announced it would reduce public development assistance by more than €2 billion – nearly 40 percent of its annual allocation.
The United Kingdom has cut its overseas development assistance from 0.5 percent to 0.3 percent of gross national income, while Germany and the Netherlands are amongst others to have announced substantial reductions in foreign aid.
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This comes as the United States – formerly the worlds largest contributor to overseas relief funding – has shut down or drastically reduced several aid programmes, including USAID, amid accusations of inefficiency from the Trump administration.
These decisions carry serious consequences for the humanitarian work of NGOs such as the NRC.
"We’re layering compromise upon compromise," Matar told RFI. "And those compromises are deadly."
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The NRC report also makes an impassioned plea for a shift in priorities, with the organisation's secretary-general Jan Egeland saying: "Displacement isn’t a distant crisis. It’s a shared responsibility. We must stand up and demand a reversal of brutal aid cuts which are costing more lives by the day."
While governments and institutions must lead the charge, Matar stressed that ordinary people also have a role to play.
"Humanitarian aid works. It helps people start to dream of a future again," she said. "We can write to our MPs, speak out, and demand that our governments stop cutting aid in our name. We don’t need these crises to come to our borders to care about them."
