In Cameroon, Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is not taught in schools. This means that many young people lack vital knowledge, skills and attitudes to navigate their developing sexuality and build healthy relationships. Many adolescent girls do not understand their bodies and cannot make informed decisions about their sexual health.
The ongoing Anglophone Crisis is not only causing hundreds of thousands of people to be displaced. It is also creating an alarming prevalence of conflict-related sexual violence where rape is used as a weapon of war. This causes a surge in adolescent pregnancies. The need for adolescent girls to acquire knowledge on sexual and reproductive health cannot be overstated.
There are very real consequences from the lack of sexuality education and support.
Eleven year old Faith (not her real name) died as a result of being denied knowledge about and control over her own body. She was raped, and got pregnant and contracted HIV as a result.
Little Faith did not understand the changes to her body after being raped and as such did not seek help. Her parents concealed the rape for fear of shame and stigmatizing the family. Both they and Faith were ignorant of the right to safe abortion care.
As the pregnancy developed, Faith was expelled from the community and abandoned at a district health service where she resided at the mercy of community volunteers. She had a stillbirth, and also developed depression. She died on the 11th of February 2025, as her peers were celebrating National Youth Day, a day reserved to celebrate young people in Cameroon.
Faith is just one example of the many girls and women we see who are harmed by male violence, and a lack of support and reproductive health services and information.
Rape survivors have the right to abortion care under the law in Cameroon.
The abortion law in Cameroon allows for legal abortion under certain conditions including where pregnancy results from rape. However, at CYJULERC we have observed that despite the surge in rape in crisis regions, those affected lack knowledge of the law and rape survivors do not apply to access their legal right to safe abortion.
The fact that rape and abortion are still highly sensitive in Cameroon causes adolescent girls and their parents to conceal the pregnancies for fear of the family being stigmatized.
CYJULERC is educating adolescent girls and parents about their right to legal, safe abortion.
With SAAF support, CYJULERC is intensifying Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) among adolescent girls in conflict-affected communities in Cameroon. We are encouraging them to speak up and to visit partner health facilities as soon as they can. We are educating them on their human right to safe abortion care in case of pregnancy resulting from rape.
CYJULERC is also educating parents on abortion as an important health care service authorized by the law in Cameroon. Educating them on the importance of abortion care for adolescent girls to protect their health, to enable them to continue their education, get jobs and improve their welfare.
CYJULERC is also training health workers on physical and mental health care for rape survivors.
CYJULERC is partnering with local health facilities and training health workers to provide non-judgmental abortion care and services to women and girls. CYJULERC is also training health workers on essential mental health care.
We remain hopeful that with the intensification of CSE among internally displaced adolescents and the expansion of activities to more conflict-affected communities, cases like Faith’s will be averted. We work to ensure more adolescent girls and parents are equipped with knowledge to make informed choices and to access abortion care and services when they need them.
We call on the government to draft and promote age-appropriate Comprehensive Sexuality Education in schools in Cameroon – to change lives, and to save lives.
By Esther Ayuk, President of Cameroon Young Jurists Legal Resource Center (CYJULERC), a SAAF grantee partner in Cameroon.