Women from the two volatile English-speaking regions of Cameroon have appealed for stronger support for women-led peace initiatives to restore peace in the Anglophone regions ravaged by a decade-long armed conflict.
A women-led coalition advancing inclusive peace and security in the two regions, known as the South West North West Women’s Taskforce (SNWOT), appealed during a strategic briefing on the women, peace, and security agenda in Cameroon with diplomatic missions accredited to Yaounde, on Thursday, September 10, 2026.
During the event at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, SNWOT unveiled its five-year strategic plan to restore peace in the two regions, where lives continue to be lost daily due to the drawn-out conflict. The 2026-2030 plan seeks to give women and girls stronger voices in violence prevention and peace processes within affected communities.
“Our strategic plan is anchored on five priority areas: build resilience and social cohesion within communities, strengthen the participation of women and youth in peace processes, conduct evidence-based policy advocacy for change, strengthen the internal capacity of SNWOT as a movement, and develop partnerships both at national and international levels,” Clotilda Andiensa, SNWOT’s General Coordinator, explained.
At least 6,500 people have been killed, with 584,000 others uprooted from their homes and now internally displaced. At the same time, an additional 73,000 have fled to Nigeria since violence erupted in the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon in 2017, following what began as an industrial strike by lawyers and teachers over the dominant use of the French language in civil law courts and Anglo-Saxon schools a year earlier.
Government-led and grassroots initiatives—most notably the 2019 Major National Dialogue and SNWOT’s National Women’s Convention for Peace—have sought to address the ongoing violence, but “the reality remains that there is still a lot of insecurity and violence ongoing within the communities,” Andiensa said.
The SNWOT General Coordinator, however, hopes that the organization’s five-year plan will be key to unlocking the deadlock in restoring peace, but its implementation requires the support of other national and international stakeholders.
“The violence has been on for 10. This doesn’t mean we have not been working because if we were not, we would not still be living in these communities,” Andiensa told the press. “We believe that with the five-year strategic plan, if we build strategic partnerships, we will be able to build on the results we have been having, by looking at things in a more structured way with the people who understand them,” she added.
The Swiss Ambassador to Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Equatorial Guinea agrees that building sustainable peace is not a one-man affair. Ambassador Natalie Kohli said that restoring peace in communities, as SNWOT is advocating, requires cooperation and partnerships.
The Swiss diplomat disclosed that her country has been supporting peacebuilding efforts in Cameroon “for a very long time” and is very convinced about the role of women in peacebuilding processes.
“Women are anchored in the communities and they contribute to making peace more sustainable and more inclusive,” Ambassador Kohli said, hailing the initiative by SNWOT.
