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Violence Against Women

Evidence-Based Gender Equity and Transformative Development

Cameroon’s 2011 Agropastoral Assembly Reforms highlighted land tenure and women’s lack of access, ownership, and control. Women have access, but no formal legal rights to land, neither through inheritance nor any other means. Their ability to invest in land in a sustainable way is fragile and wholly dependent on variables such as marital status, whether they have children, the gender and age of their children, and customary law, etc. CAEPA will form rural women’s access and ownership committees to promote women’s right to own land, livestock, and property for farming and the development of pastoral/transhumance communities within the catchment areas.

CAEPA will also build on its previous work engaging communities and the judiciary to better protect the rights of women and girls in cases of forced marriage and domestic violence. CAEPA will continue to raise awareness about violence against women and girls and will lobby the government for a revision of legal codes to include provisions on violence against women and girls, and to build the capacity to properly respond to such situations.

CAEPA will organize workshops for pre-pubescent boys and girls on sexual and reproductive rights, to raise their awareness about consent, healthy notions of femininity and masculinity and to inform children on how to recognize and seek help in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation. Women’s groups will also focus on shared learning around basic family planning methods (moon beads, condoms, exclusive breastfeeding, etc.), safe and consensual sex, VCT, and maternal and newborn nutrition and health. Men will be invited to quarterly ‘soccer socials’ where key issues such as masculinity and femininity, safe and consensual sex, VCT, communication, and healthy intimate relationships will be discussed in a relaxed social environment. Birth registration and school attendance will be promoted to better protect the rights of every child.