By Tata Mbunwe
A bill to establish femicide as a standalone criminal offence and strengthen protection of women and girls is being finalised by the Cameroon government, in response to skyrocketing femicide, with more than 60 women killed by intimate partners since January.
In a recent interview with the BBC, the Minister for Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Marie Thérèse Abena Ondoua, said the bill is undergoing scrutiny at the Prime Minister’s office and is hoped to be tabled before Parliament at the November session.
“I can reassure you that we have reached a consensus on the formulation of the different articles and what have you,” she said.
“So I think that the next step is for that bill to go to the highest authority of the state and then before the Parliament. So we have come a long way and I don’t think the Prime Minister’s office is sleeping on it. No. It has come a long way. We have reached an agreement and my hope, and I don’t think I’m wrong, is that that bill will reach Parliament in the November session.”
Femicide, which the UN defines as the intentional killing of women or girls because of their gender, is an extreme form of gender-based violence that has become increasingly rampant in Cameroon.
The government reported 50 cases of femicide in the country between January and April this year alone. Late this August, at least 10 women again died at the hands of intimate partners within an eight-day span.
Currently, femicide is punished in Cameroon under the same laws criminalizing murder or manslaughter, with penalties ranging from life imprisonment to the death penalty.
However, legal minds have often observed that the femicide problem in Cameroon would not be solved by enacting new laws but by firmly implementing existing ones, which often suffer from a lack of enforcement.