Cameroon Appeal

Protracted conflict, climate shocks, recurrent disease outbreaks and economic pressures continue to drive a complex humanitarian crisis in Cameroon. In 2026, an estimated 2.9 million people, including 1.5 million children (51 per cent girls), will require humanitarian assistance. While the highest severity of need is concentrated in the Far North, North-West, South-West and eastern border areas hosting refugees, vulnerabilities increasingly extend nationwide. The Norwegian Refugee Council considers Cameroon the world's most neglected displacement crisis.

In Far North Region, attacks by armed non-state actors and cross-border incursions persist, displacing families, with areas of Cameroon bordering Nigeria and Chad consistently classified at severity level 4. Cameroon is home to 2.1 million forcibly displaced people including internally displaced persons, returnees, refugees and asylum-seekers, with children making up more than half of those displaced. New displacement due to floods in late 2025, particularly in Logone-et-Chari and Mayo-Tsanaga departments in Far North Region, underscores the fragility of the situation. Protection risks, including family separation, child labour, recruitment and use by armed groups, gender-based violence and other child rights violations remain widespread – yet are underreported due to insecurity, limited mobility and stigma. 

In North-West and South-West regions, armed conflict continues to disrupt livelihoods. Repeated lockdowns (in 2025, the longest lockdown lasted five weeks) alongside attacks on schools and teachers, roadblocks and other movement restrictions have severely affected communities.

In crisis-affected regions, armed conflict and climate-related shocks continue to drive displacement, undermine social cohesion and disrupt essential services: 1.4 million people are in need of health services, 1 million require education support, 1.6 million require WASH support and 2 million require protection. Children and caregivers are exposed to grave risks. 

Recurrent floods in Far North Region, along with drought pockets and landslides, continue to damage WASH systems, destroy crops, disrupt schooling and heighten public health risks. These shocks, combined with insecurity, rising prices, reduced fertilizer access and declining agricultural productivity, are driving an increase the number of households facing crisis levels of food insecurity (Intergated Food Security Phase Classification phase 3), with around 2 million people projected to require emergency food assistance between October 2025 and May 2026.

In addition, Cameroon is battling multiple public health threats, including outbreaks of measles, cholera, polio (vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2), mpox and malaria. This has further overstretched the country's fragile health system. Limited WASH access, especially in high-severity areas, increases the risk of waterborne diseases. At the same time, education and child protection remain severely affected by school closures, insecurity, displacement and climate-related destruction of school infrastructure. 

Partner presence and resources have declined in Cameroon, widening sectoral service gaps throughout 2025. While local authorities, civil society organizations, youth groups (including U-reporters) and community networks remain critical to service delivery, they require sustained financing and capacity-strengthening to maintain their responses to the country's crises.

UNICEF’s 2026 strategy in Cameroon focuses on delivering integrated, child-centred, life-saving assistance. UNICEF will prioritize interventions in regions with high vulnerability, in alignment with the 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan. 

UNICEF will strengthen national and local systems to sustain essential service delivery while applying a locally tailored nexus approach that focuses on durable solutions; strengthens community and system resilience to address protracted displacement linked to earlier influxes of refugees from the Central African Republic in Adamawa and East regions; supports vulnerable families in Far North Region through national social protection mechanisms; and strengthens local systems and capacities in North-West and South-West regions. 

Programming will remain flexible and shock-responsive to address new displacement, climatic events and disease outbreaks, while ensuring gender equality and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, and gender-based violence prevention and response. 

While UNICEF is narrowing the overall geographic scope of its response in Cameroon to Far North, North-West and South-West, it will aim to expand its reach within these regions by scaling up life-saving nutrition interventions. For example, in parts of North-West and South-West regions where localized pockets of wasting exist, UNICEF will expand prevention and treatment services, grounded in community-level screening, to prevent further deterioration of the nutrition situation. In Far North Region, where recurrent flooding and population displacement heighten vulnerability to malnutrition, UNICEF and partners will strengthen wasting prevention services by scaling up screening essential to ensuring timely identification and management of children with severe wasting. 

UNICEF will expand integrated multisectoral interventions. This includes scaling up immunization and primary healthcare; strengthening disease surveillance and outbreak response; improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene; and supporting learning continuity through provision of learning materials and via temporary learning spaces. UNICEF will prioritize child protection services and gender-based violence prevention and response, including case management, mental health and psychosocial support; community-based prevention will be a priority. Humanitarian cash transfers will further support the most vulnerable households, with strengthened interoperability between the Humanitarian cash Operations and Programme Ecosystem (HOPE) information management system for humanitarian cash transfers and the Unified Social Registry of Cameroon to improve targeting and efficiency.

Mechanisms to ensure accountability to affected populations will underpin humanitarian action. This includes integrating community feedback into response design and delivery in highly constrained and under-resourced settings. Localization and community engagement remain central pillars of the UNICEF response. UNICEF will scale up two-way communication platforms, including U-Report Communities and U-Responders, to ensure that community feedback guides programme adaptation and decision-making. Partnerships with regional authorities, community-based organizations, youth networks and local non-governmental organizations will be strengthened, including through area-based coordination in North-West and South-West regions to reinforce locally led response capacities. 

Climate resilience and anticipatory action will be built through pre-positioning, flood-resilient infrastructure, solar systems, cash transfers and youth-led early warning and community preparedness mechanisms that aim to reduce the impact of recurrent climate shocks. 

UNICEF is supporting the transition to government-led coordination within the humanitarian cluster system and the broader humanitarian reset, and efforts to strengthen systems along the humanitarian–development–peace nexus. At the same time, UNICEF will continue acting as provider of last resort for education, nutrition, WASH and child protection.