Cameroon Tops List of World’s Most Neglected Displacement Crises of 2024

Author: Vera Rousseff

June 10, 2025

HRRC calls on major media outlets to increase their coverage of under-reported displacement crises and urges the international community to continue advocating for the needs of refugees around the world.

Refugees from the Central African Republic living in Cameroon. [Image credit: Patricia Pouhe/NRC]

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has identified Cameroon as the country with the most neglected refugee crisis of 2024. Ethiopia, Mozambique, Burkino Faso, and Mali are also at the top of the list.

Each year, the NRC publishes a report on the world’s most neglected displacement crises in order to raise awareness and encourage advocacy. The annual report, which the NRC first began publishing in 2017, examines a combination of funding coverage, media attention, and political will to identify the ten countries whose refugee crises have largely been disregarded by the rest of the world. Last Tuesday, the NRC released their 2024 report, which features a more statistically rigorous methodology and an added emphasis on advocacy. 

This year’s report begins with a bleak overview of displacement around the world. 2024 saw twice the number of displaced people across the globe compared to ten years ago, with humanitarian funding covering only half of the world’s needs. At the same time, many countries have reduced support for displaced people due to economic and political turmoil, further exacerbating the lack of attention and funding.

At the top of the list is Cameroon, which has struggled with three distinct crises over the past decade. In the country’s Far North, Islamist groups including Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) are killing and abducting civilians, resulting in displacement that has been further exacerbated by climate hazards. In the North-West and South-West regions, civilians have faced abuse at the hands of armed separatists in what is known as the Anglophone crisis. Finally, conflict in the neighbouring Central African Republic has forced hundreds of thousands of refugees into already-vulnerable regions in Cameroon, adding to the country’s humanitarian burdens.

As a result of these ongoing conflicts, approximately 3.4 million people in Cameroon were “in urgent need of assistance and protection” in 2024, with at least 2.8 million people facing “acute food insecurity.” The report further notes that the crisis has been chronically underfunded and under-reported, resulting in just 45% of requested humanitarian funding being received. Unless financial and political support improves, the situation in Cameroon is expected to worsen in 2025.

Second on the list was Ethiopia, where climate disasters, the effects of the Tigray war, and the more recent conflict in Amhara have resulted in the internal displacement of approximately 2.3 million people. Third was Mozambique, which the report states has faced “a perfect storm of armed conflict, political turmoil and climate-driven disaster.” 2.8 million people in the country suffered acute food insecurity in 2024.

All in all, eight out of the ten countries on the list are in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the only two non-African countries being Iran and Honduras. The overrepresentation of African countries in the report highlights the prevalence and severity of humanitarian disasters across the continent, the origins of which can often be traced back to the effects of colonization and ongoing exploitation by the West. However, the labeling of these crises as “neglected” points to another issue, namely the insufficient media coverage of humanitarian crises in Africa, particularly across Western media. As the world struggles with record-high levels of displacement and dwindling humanitarian funding, international media outlets have a responsibility to ensure that the world’s most critical humanitarian disasters are not forgotten.

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Glossary

• Acute: present or experienced to a severe or intense degree.

• Boko Haram: an Islamist extremist group based in northeastern Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, responsible for widespread violence, abductions, and displacement.

• Displacement: the forced movement of people from their homes due to conflict, persecution, natural disasters, or other crises.

• Dwindling: gradually becoming smaller in size or amount, or fewer in number.

• Exacerbate: to make a problem, situation, or feeling worse.

• Exploitation: the use of something in order to get an advantage from it.

• Humanitarian: concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare.

• Internal displacement: when people are forced to flee their homes but remain within their own country’s borders.

• Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP): a splinter group of Boko Haram affiliated with the Islamic State, known for militant violence in the Lake Chad region.

• Methodology: a system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity.

• Political will: the commitment of political leaders to take action on a specific issue, often influenced by public opinion, media, and international pressure.

• Prevalence: the fact that something is very common or happens often.

• Refugee: a person who has been forced to flee their country due to war, persecution, or violence.

• Separatist: a person or group that seeks independence for a region or group from the larger political entity to which it belongs.

• Tigray war: a conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia that began in 2020, involving the Ethiopian government and Tigray People’s Liberation Front, causing widespread displacement and humanitarian need.

• Turmoil: a state of great disturbance, confusion, or uncertainty.