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Cameroon is both a major host country to refugees from Nigeria in the Far North region and from the Central African Republic in the eastern regions, and is increasingly a source of displacement as just over 1 million people are internally displaced, including over half of them due to violence in the Northwest and Southwest anglophone regions.
DRC has been present in Adamawa and Eastern Cameroon since 2017 to support Central African refugees. There, DRC implements a graduation approach and works with refugees and vulnerable Cameroonians to find durable solutions. Since January 2023, DRC has been leading a consortium with several international organizations whose activities aim at a comprehensive response to the Central African crisis spanning the border area between Cameroon and CAR.
In 2019, DRC opened a base in the English-speaking Southwest region, affected by an armed separatist insurgency since 2017. DRC and its local partners support internally displaced Cameroonians and their host communities with emergency protection and assistance with food security and livelihood opportunities. In 2025, DRC is supporting a localized Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) via Cameroonian partners to aid conflict-affected hard-to-reach communities in the Northwest region.
In 2023, DRC extended its activities to Cameroon's Far North to provide a protection, positive peace, governance and economic resilience response to the multidimensional and interconnected crises affecting the region. Together with its local partner, DRC aims to support the many internally displaced people as well as refugees from Chad and Nigeria. Since 2024, DRC is supporting refugees in the Minawao camp through assistance based on the graduation model to lift the most vulnerable residents out of extreme poverty and the wider camp population out of dependence on humanitarian aid.
In Adamawa and Eastern Cameroon, DRC implements sustainable solutions in partnership with local stakeholders for Central African refugees and host communities.
Our projects aim to meet the immediate and long-term needs of the populations, through a graduation approach, by equipping them in community-based protection and peaceful conflict management, conducting campaigns for child protection and against GBV, encouraging social cohesion, strengthening their economic capacities, the financial inclusion of the most vulnerable and stimulating entrepreneurship, while supporting good governance practices.
In addition, cross-border advocacy is carried out with local and national authorities on both sides of the border to reinforce the application of the rights and duties of refugees and returnees.
In the South-West region since 2019, DRC has been assisting refugees as well as IDPs who have been victims of the Anglophone crisis raging since 2017.
Given the severity of the crisis and the urgency of the needs, DRC's humanitarian response is designed to be rapid, multi- sectoral and sustainable. Working in partnership with local CSOs, DRC is responding to protection incidents with a focus on the vulnerability of the youngest and women (psychosocial support, host family training, menstrual hygiene, life skills for adolescents, API, SFN, CM, civil documentation).
DRC also aims to strengthen the livelihoods of the most vulnerable via IGAs, provide food assistance through vouchers, and conducts sectoral studies on the needs of the area. In addition, since 2023, DRC has extended its intervention zone to the communities of Ndian and Kupe-Manenguba, and since 2025 has expanded into the North-West (RRM) with local partners for a rapid aid response reaching the hard-to-reach populations.
In the Far North, we work with communities and local actors.
There, DRC promotes social cohesion and peacebuilding by strengthening local conflict management capacities, improving the resilience and sustainable economic integration of young people and women affected by conflict, and supporting local governance to strengthen community stabilization and resilience.
With BHA-funded RISE project focused on the population of the Minawao camp, DRC is strengthening the resilience, self-reliance and socio-economic inclusion of these refugees through food consumption support, market inclusion and financial services, in a coordinated effort with CRS to relieve extreme poverty in the camp.
