20% of women in Cameroon are victims of sexual abuse

Violence against women and girls is a reality in Cameroon and according to the Demographic and Health Survey (Eds 2011), 20% of women are victims of sexual violence in Cameroon.

These statistics are the leitmotif of the NGO Society for Women and Aid in Africa (SWAA), Association of African Women against AIDS. This is to bar the way to this inhuman treatment that SWAA organizes since last December 10 in Yaoundé, a capacity building workshop, with imams, pastors, and priests, the daily newspaper Mutations reported on December 15, 2015.

The objective of this training, which ends in December 16, 2015, and funded through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, is to educate a hundred religious leaders for better management of cases of sexual violence based on gender.

SWAA in terms envisages the establishment of a network for the formulation of a plea to the fight against sexual violence, the newspaper said.

According to Suzanne Ngnié Tagne, program manager at SWAA-Cameroon, more than half of the victims, or 59%, have never revealed the violence.

Violence can be identified as sub-fondling, rape, insults, beatings, etc., reminds Clarnette Sodon, psychologist / psychotherapist in Yaounde.

The causes of the violence, according to her, are mainly the traditional perception of the difference between man and woman, ignorance by women of their rights and poverty forcing them to remain dependent on men, and humanitarian crises.