Publication Details
Abstract
During conflict, the majority of those who are killed or “disappeared” are men and male youths. This accounts for the refugee population to be mostly women and their dependent children (UNHCR, 1995, p. 79). Research has shown that the legal protections for women around the world, including female refugees who have experienced violence, are largely gender-blind and do not address the reality of women’s lives. In refugee-generating situations, conditions and actual refugee circumstances, issues of females take different forms like rape, survival sex, female genital mutilation, unwanted and early pregnancy, physical/ psychological and emotional abuse, defilement and bride kidnapping in the name of ‘early marriage’ and sexual harassment among different female/human rights abuses. In Cameroon, discriminatory customary laws give men more rights than women on housing, land and property issues. As a result, many women are forced to live in precarious settlements, such as with host families, temporary shelters for displaced people, lodgings donated by traditional leaders, or temporary camps. This paper investigates the challenges that female refugees from the Central African Republic face in Cameroon. The study employs a descriptive research design, collecting and analysing data through semi-structured and structured interviews. With a sample of 30 participants, 14 from the East Region, and 8 each from the Centre and Littoral Regions of Cameroon, through interviews engaging in face-to-face discussions with refugee women and girls, leaders or notable figures from the host communities, and UNHCR officials in the Gado Badzere refugee camp, through Convenient, purposive and Snowball sampling techniques. Results proved that female refugees from the Central African Republic face challenges such as limited or no availability of natural resources, as well as good jobs, and shelter, which forces them into early, forced and or child marriage, prostitution, survival sex, stealing, and begging as a means of survival. The study concludes that, based on the challenges faced by female refugees from the Central African Republic, members of host communities in Cameroon and these refugees are living in negative peace. This situation arises because they compete for limited socio-economic and natural resources, leading to female refugees often being exposed to precarious situations because of the challenges mentioned above that they face.