For nearly a decade, the North-West and South-West (NWSW) regions of Cameroon have been gripped by a violent socio-political crisis that has displaced hundreds of thousands, destroyed livelihoods, and destabilized entire communities. Once peaceful and productive, these regions have become humanitarian flashpoints marked by fear, displacement, and deep social fractures. The continuing hostilities have disrupted education, healthcare, and social protection systems, forcing families, especially women and children to rely on fragile coping mechanisms for survival.

According to humanitarian assessments, over one million people in the NWSW remain acutely in need of protection and assistance. Daily life is governed by insecurity: arbitrary arrests, abductions, gender-based violence, child exploitation, and widespread psychosocial trauma. For the most vulnerable—internally displaced persons (IDPs), women, adolescent girls, and children; the breakdown of safety nets has left them exposed to abuse, exploitation, and neglect. Many displaced families live in overcrowded settlements without access to clean water, education, or medical services. Children without birth certificates risk statelessness, exclusion from schooling, and denial of healthcare, perpetuating a cycle of invisibility and vulnerability.

Women and girls have borne a disproportionate share of this suffering. With men often killed, missing, or displaced, women have become both caregivers and breadwinners under extremely precarious conditions. Sexual violence, intimate-partner abuse, and early marriages have surged, while economic destitution pushes many into exploitative or high-risk survival strategies. The lack of medical care within the crucial 72-hour window after sexual assault has compounded trauma and left survivors without justice or recovery.

The erosion of protection structures and the psychosocial toll of violence have also taken a severe emotional and developmental toll on children. Many have witnessed killings or lost parents, leaving them traumatized, uneducated, and vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups or other forms of exploitation. The absence of psychosocial support and community-based protection has created a generation in distress, with limited hope for recovery.

Against this backdrop, the LUKMEF-IRC-ECHO project was conceived as a direct response to the escalating protection crisis. It sought to restore safety, dignity, and resilience among crisis-affected populations through an integrated approach combining Protection (ProL), Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE), and Child Protection (CP) services. The project’s justification rests on the urgent need to save lives, safeguard rights, and build local capacity for long-term resilience.

By addressing the intersecting vulnerabilities of displacement, gender inequality, and child protection gaps, the intervention provided a lifeline for 1,759 individuals, most of them IDPs, survivors, and at-risk children. It was not merely a humanitarian action. It was a moral and strategic imperative to rebuild hope and stability in a region where conflict had stripped people of both.