Recent cases of women being killed by men with whom they have been in relationships have sparked debate in Cameroon over whether the country is witnessing femicide.
For Dr. Lontum Charles, a political scientist and philosophy lecturer at the Catholic University of Cameroon (CATUC), Bamenda, the distinction matters.
Speaking in Bamenda on Saturday, September 5, Dr. Lontum argued that the recent cases should primarily be understood as domestic violence resulting in murder, rather than femicide.
He began his argument with a distinction drawn from ethics between actus hominis, acts performed without conscious control or deliberate consent, and actus humanis, or human acts, which are guided by knowledge, reason, and free will.
“A human act must be willed, known, and responsible,” Dr. Lontum explained, stressing that people are accountable when they knowingly and deliberately choose their actions.
Domestic violence and murder
According to Dr. Lontum, the recent killings of women across Cameroon involve men who were in some form of relationship with their victims, with the circumstances and motives differing from one case to another.
He described these incidents as domestic violence that has escalated into murder, noting that the alleged perpetrators are responsible for their actions and should face the consequences under the law.
The political scientist and CATUC lecturer also distinguished between killing and murder. While both involve taking another person's life, he explained that murder involves a deliberate intention to cause death.
By way of illustration, he said a woman accidentally struck by a stray bullet would have been killed, but the incident would not necessarily constitute murder because there was no deliberate intention to take her life.
What is femicide?
Dr. Lontum Charles said femicide refers specifically to the deliberate killing of women because they are women.
In such cases, he explained, women are targeted as a group, irrespective of whether they are married, single, or in relationships. The motive could be religious, political, social, or linked to another form of systematic discrimination against women.
This, he argued, is different from the current pattern of cases in Cameroon, where women are being killed within the context of individual relationships and for different personal reasons. “Therefore, what has been happening in Cameroon is domestic violence and murder, not femicide,” he said.
A failure of family and society
Dr. Lontum Charles nevertheless condemned the killings in the strongest terms, describing them as evidence of a breakdown in family morality and a wider failure by society to intervene.
He argued that in many troubled relationships, warning signs are often visible long before violence becomes fatal.
Someone within the family, among friends, or in the community may know that a relationship is under serious strain but choose to remain silent. For Dr. Lontum Charles, that silence must end. “So let us speak out.”
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