The Anglophone Cameroon Conflict and the Responsibility to Protect

The Anglophone Cameroon crisis, which started in 2016, has now become one of Africa’s many protracted intra-state conflicts. This crisis has resulted in several instances of human rights violations by both security forces and separatist fighters, against the population of the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. While states have the responsibility to protect their citizens from grave atrocities in times of conflict, the international community is also obliged to step in when there is proof of unwillingness or inability on the part of a state to do so. The Anglophone Cameroon crisis has demonstrated elements of the lack of protection of the population in Anglophone regions, raising the need for a Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) intervention in order to protect the population in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. With the use of desktop research and an interpretive method, this paper examines the RtoP doctrine in the context of the Anglophone Cameroon crisis, looking especially at the reasons why the international community has not invoked the doctrine to intervene in the situation in Anglophone Cameroon. The paper recommends some form of RtoP intervention from the international community, especially the UN, the AU and other nations with bilateral or multi-lateral relations with Cameroon, in order to both protect civilians and prevent further violence in the situation in Anglophone Cameroon.