In Cameroon, nearly 4 million people need assistance and humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations. The government and its partners presented this Thursday, May 11th in Yaoundé the humanitarian response plan. Needs are estimated at over $400 million.
This aid will first go to so-called priority areas, regions affected by various crises which have prompted hundreds of thousands of people to move.
These include the far north, plagued by terrorism and natural disasters. Last year floods affected more than 310,000 people, some losing their fields and homes. There are also the two English-speaking regions in the west of the country, where more than a million people are in an emergency, the internally displaced in particular.
This year’s humanitarian response plan calls for $407.3 million to assist approximately 2.7 million people, more than 50% of whom are women and children. “You have a set of needs there, whether it’s protection, whether it’s shelter. These people need to find a roof to be able to live. Sometimes it’s food assistance because these are people who have fled and who have nothing left, who can no longer return to their fields, cultivate, etc. Health care, “explains Karen Perrin, Head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Cameroon.