Women’s Day:

Manyu Women Stand Up For Peace, Say No To Violence

By Nwo Fuanya in Mamfe

Manyu women in meeting

Women in Manyu division of the South West Region have spoken out strongly against sexual violence as well as called for a return to peace so that they can carry out their routine activities normally. This was during a mass meeting organized at the Mamfe Women Empowerment Centre recently as a wake-up call to end all forms of violence and discrimination against Manyu women in the midst of the ongoing Anglophone crisis which has seen the Manyu woman hardest hit.

            The meeting was organized by a local NGO, The Community Initiative For Development Communication, CODEC, in association with the International Federation of Female Lawyers, FIDA and some community based organizations in the area. The meeting was aimed at drawing the attention of local administrative authorities and other development stakeholders to the mayhem that Manyu women were going through in the midst of the armed conflict between separatists and government forces currently going on in the area.

            During the meeting the CODEC Resource person Madam Maureen Tabi Ketchem told the women that ever since the armed conflict started women in all the four subdivisions that make up Manyu division have suffered severely. According to her, many of them have been displaced due to severe fighting, they cannot go to their farms or carry out their routine activities. Besides this, she lamented that many children with unknown fathers are going to emerge in the community due to rape. She thus called on the women to speak out on the issues affecting them.

            Taking the cue, the Executive Director of CODEC, Aminateh Nkemngu noted that the project which is being carried out with FIDA is aimed at protecting women and young girls from all forms of sexual violence during the conflict. He said Cameroon has already come out with an action plan to implement the UN Women, peace and security agenda.

            To this end the CODEC boss urged the women to organize themselves and report all cases of sexual violence so that action can be taken to end it. He added that some community groups had already been trained in Buea to help investigate sexual violence   in the area.

            On their part the women expressed concerns that they are too afraid of speaking out because if they speak out on violence perpetrated by ambazonia fighters, the fighters target them, and if they speak on the ones perpetrated by government soldiers they are equally targeted. It was suggested at the meeting that the women chose their own leaders who can exercise a high degree of confidentiality and report to them so that they can in turn relay the information for appropriate action. During the meeting attended by about 200 women, mostly leaders of community groups, a catalogue of problems relating to some of these offences were documented and forwarded to the Senior Divisional Officer for Manyu, Joseph Oum II. while receiving the complains in his office, the SDO pledged to work with the women to build community peace adding that if peace returns to the community, these offences will no longer occur.

            Meantime women leaders from  all the four subdivisions of Manyu, notably Eyumodjock, Upper Banyang, Mamfe and Akwaya were tasked to in turn restitute the exercise to their community groups and gather the needed information. The women from Akwaya expressed strong concerns that due to inaccessibility, they have been completely abandoned to themselves, with no help, and a lot of atrocities are committed on women in the area and go unreported. At the end of the meeting the women hailed the exercise as a strong departure point for them to find solace when it comes to sexual violence in the ongoing conflict.