Interview: Challenges and Responses in the Face of Attacks on Education in North-West South-West regions of Cameroon

The North-West South-West (NWSW) Regions crisis in Cameroon is a complex and protracted humanitarian crisis and is currently assessed as the second most neglected displacement crisis in 2023, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council's latest study. The security situation is volatile due to clashes between non-state armed groups (NSAGs) and State security forces, as well as NSAG attacks against the civilian population that has affected the population for the last 7 years (since 2016). The 2024 Cameroon Humanitarian Needs Overview estimates that 596,000 school-aged children need humanitarian assistance, including 156,000 internally displaced children. Due to both the insecurity in the region and education being seen as a target in this conflict, schools and children are often at risk and have been attacked. Currently, classes are disrupted for at least 6 days every 30 days due to general insecurity, the presence of armed groups and imposed lockdown/ghost town, according to the Cameroon Education Cluster (CEC)’s 2024 JENA). Attacks on education have, therefore, been identified as a key interlinked education-protection need in the CEC 2023-2025 Strategy, and the Education Cluster has been piloting an approach to advance this specific workstream.

This video was produced in the first half of 2024

Roger Buguzi and Emmaculate Ikome, Education Cluster Coordinators speak about the situation in Cameroon and their work on attacks on education.

The situation in the NWSW Regions has been deteriorating in the last 8 years. What is the state of the education in emergencies in NWSW Cameroon in 2024?

Emmaculate Ikome and Roger Buguzi: The crisis in the NWSW regions has evolved quite a lot in terms of education in the last 8 years. On the one hand, the education situation has improved: more schools are opening, more communities are accepting education and are welcoming sending their children to school, regardless of the risk, and even more children are still willing to go to schools if this is possible. On the other hand, there are still significant attacks on education (40 attacks recorded by the Education Cluster as of June 2024), through for instance lockdowns/ghost towns ordered by NSAG during specific times of the year. For instance, a lockdown is declared for two weeks at the beginning of the school year to protest against education. Besides, on average, 41% of schools are not functioning in the NWSW regions, with quite some disparities in percentages across the different divisions.

What are the specificities of the response being coordinated by the Cameroon Education Cluster and what are the key challenges?

Another challenge is regarding the funding: there is little or no funding coming our way.  (Editor’s note: while in 2021, only 25% of the funding needs were met, the figure dropped to 1% in 2023, according to the GEC Data Repository) Cameroon is an underfunded context. For four years now, we have not had any CERF funding whereas education is at the center of the crisis, so it impacts the delivery of the educational response. Also, as the cluster is activated at a sub-national level, focusing only on the NWSW regions of Cameroon, we have the participation of more than 90% of local actors as the cluster’s partners. This impacts the funding available, as the local partners cannot directly access many international funds and so, many activities planned by them as part of the response framework cannot be implemented.

Thirdly, there is an accessibility issue: in certain areas, we cannot access the communities, because of both security reasons and physical barriers: there are no roads. Even though partners are implementing activities in 12 of 13 Divisions, there are still some hard-to-reach areas where roads do not permit us to approach, which prevents children from accessing education. This physical constraint also results in difficulties in monitoring the actions implemented by local partners.

Attacks on education continued in 2024, with teachers and students being abducted and school premises set on fire, in addition to the regular Monday lockdown days. How is the Cameroon Education Cluster strengthening its work on attacks on Education? Which steps have already been taken?