Scores of youths, a majority of them girls, are told that menstruation is a natural part of the reproductive cycle.

Officials in Cameroon’s social affairs and health ministries say the monthly flows are not a curse and girls and women should never be isolated from markets, schools, churches and other public places because of their menstrual cycle.

The government of the central African state says it invited boys to menstrual health day activities because boys often mock girls in schools when they see blood dripping on their legs or skirts.

Tabe Edwan is the spokesperson of Haven of Rebirth Cameroon, an association that takes care of victims of sexual and gender-based violence. She says she participates in in activities to mark World Menstrual Health Day to battle taboos about menstruation that persist in Cameroon.

"We are looking at instances of stigmatization such as prohibition from cooking, prohibition from attending religious ceremonies or visiting such spaces," she said. "Most often a young girl who is having her menstrual flow is considered to be unclean and so anything that she touches becomes unclean or it also becomes contaminated."

Cameroon’s government says World Menstrual Day activities took place in many towns and villages, especially in the northwest and southwest regions, where a separatist conflict, now in its seventh year, has displaced about 750,000 people.

The country’s Social Affairs Ministry says displaced women and girls have lost nearly everything and lack even the $2 needed to buy sanitary pads each time they are on their monthly cycle.

Mirabelle Sonkey is founder of the Network for Solidarity Hope and Empowerment, a founding member of the International Menstrual Hygiene Coalition.

Sonkey says she is disheartened when women and girls use rags, papers and tree leaves or just anything unhealthy to stop blood flow because they cannot afford sanitary pads.

"We usually give about 1,000 dignity kits which include buckets, soap, pants and reusable, washable menstrual pads," she said. "We are still advocating for pads to be free. Our mission is to have an environment where pads will be accessible, that is why we are opening pad banks now where vulnerable women and girls can go there and have pads."

Sonkey pleaded with donors to provide sanitary pads to give to several thousand northern Cameroonian girls and women displaced by Boko Haram terrorism.

Cameroon’s government says 70% of menstruating women and girls lack access to regular basic sanitation products but it has not reacted to pleas from NGOs to distribute sanitary pads free of charge.

The central African state’s officials say families and communities should help put an end to stigmas by openly discussing menstrual flow and letting everyone know that menstruation is a normal and natural biological function.

Trade unions say tens of thousands of trained teachers, doctors and nurses have fled the country in the past year because of unemployment and tough working conditions, with monthly salaries at half the minimum.

Celestin Bama, secretary general of the Confederation of Cameroon Workers Trade Union, or CSTC, addressed workers gathered at the May 20 Boulevard in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.

Bama said the government of Cameroon has not done anything substantial within the past 30 years to improve the conditions of workers. Thirty years ago, Cameroon imposed a 70 percent salary cut on government workers, Bama said, adding that there is a growing need to increase wages as prices of basic commodities have spiked 40 percent.

Cameroon trade unions say a 20 percent fuel price hike imposed by the government in February without a corresponding salary increase has also made living very difficult.

Anong Jacob, a member of the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union, or CATTU, said some private school owners pay teachers as little as $50 a month.

"What do you expect from a teacher who earns 40,000 or 30,000 francs in a town like Yaounde or Douala or Bamenda, Bafoussam? What quality of shoe or dress would you expect them to put [wear] and come to school? You see the poor teacher with twisted shirts, with twisted shoes and all of that. Sometimes they don't have money to pay electricity bills. They suffer a lot of humiliation,” Anong said. “I think the government should put some policies [in place] to see that proprietors and proprietresses respect the minimum wage."

Cameroon's agreed minimum wage is $70 per month. Hilary Mbuwel, a teacher and social critic, said private employers do not respect the minimum wage because the government does not police private companies.

"Proprietors know that if they do not respect the minimum wage, nobody calls them to account and so, since there is nobody to call them to account, nobody to punish them, they do it with impunity," Mbuwel said.

The government says there has been a 10 percent pay raise since 2023, but workers say with inflation so high, the raise is negligible. The government says the inflation rate is about 8 percent.

Cameroon Minister of Labor and Social Security Gregoire Owona said the fragile world economy and several armed conflicts that the government has to manage make it impossible for the state and private investors to satisfy the needs of all workers.

Owona said limited financial resources make it difficult for the government of Cameroon to solve the myriad problems affecting workers. He added that Cameroon President Paul Biya has ordered officials to make sure the wages of all government workers are paid regularly and as agreed in their employment contracts, while the possibility of improved workers' rights, decent working conditions and fair compensation are being examined.

Owona said the Cameroon government has instructed police and the National Insurance Fund to investigate and punish private employers who neither register their staff members to social security schemes nor respect the minimum wage.

The government says respecting agreed wages and providing retirement benefits and disability income to qualified workers and their families will reduce the current massive migration of workers for lucrative jobs elsewhere, especially in Europe and North America.

Cameroon says at least 10,000 trained professionals have fled the central African state within the past year because of unemployment, poor pay or poor working conditions.

Brys, a Belgian coach, was handed his contract by Cameroon’s sports ministry on Monday. However, the nation’s football authorities, FECAFOOT, were absent at the event held in Yaonde.

FECAFOOT last week criticized Narcisse Mouelle Kombi, Cameroon’s sports minister, for appointing Brys, who has no prior experience as a national team coach. The 61-year-old Belgian also has no previous experience working in Africa.

Samuel Eto’o, FECAFOOT’s president and a well noted former player of the Indomitable Lions issued a statement on Monday excusing himself from Brys’s unveiling.

“We thank you for inviting us to the ceremony. Following this, we inform you of the fact that we received the letter two hours before the said ceremony,” Eto’o said.

“Unfortunately, we are busy organizing the funeral of our late Dad, and for this reason we will not be able to attend presence at the ceremony,” the FECAFOOT president said.

Eto’o’s father’s funeral is scheduled for the weekend.

The former national team player balked at Brys’ appointment and is now in a deepening standoff with the minister.

In Cameroon, the government has long paid the salary of the national team coach and therefore held powerful sway over FECAFOOT’s affairs, even if such state interference is frowned upon by world football’s governing body FIFA.

Any heightened dispute risks a potential ban from international competition for Cameroon, one of the heavyweights of African football.

FECAFOOT held an emergency meeting on Saturday and asked Eto’o to propose an alternative coach for the Indomitable Lions. Earlier on the weekend, the minister defended Brys’s appointment, saying he had acted in accordance with national and international regulations.

In a letter to FECAFOOT, Kombi said his ministry’s appointment of coaching staff “in no way affects the autonomy of FECAFOOT and does not violate any of the ‘supranational regulations.”

The sports authority said FECAFOOT had suggested three candidates to the ministry but their salary demands ranged between 1.5 million euros and 2.5 million euros ($1.63 million and $2.71 million) per year.

“These are excessive amounts never paid to any coach in the history of the Indomitable Lions,” Kombi said.

Cameroonian football authorities on Monday named Wilfried Nathan Douala among 62 players suspended from the league over administrative irregularities, mostly double identity and age cheating.

There was considerable surprise ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations, where Cameroon was knocked out in the second round, when coach Rigobert Song picked the 17-year-old Douala, an unheralded player from second division club Victoria United with no previous international experience.

There was also much comment on social media about whether he was really a teenager when pictures of the player first surfaced.

An investigation by the French daily Le Monde claimed Douala had previously played in the Cameroon league using the name Alexandre Bardelli and was over 21-years-old.

Le Monde said it had asked Cameroon’s football federation to explain the irregularity before they set off for the tournament in Ivory Coast, but the Central African nation declined to comment.

Douala did not play at the Cup of Nations but was a registered squad member.

Tournament regulations dictate that if a fraud or a forgery has been committed, the national association concerned will be suspended from participation in the following two editions of the Cup of Nations.

For any administrative error in the registration of players, the national association concerned will be suspended from participation in the next edition, the rules say.

The Confederation of African Football has been contacted for comment but is yet to respond.

The badly mutilated corpse of Arsene Salomon Mbani Zogo, known as "Martinez," was found a few days after his abduction in front of a police station outside the capital Yaounde on January 17, 2023.

The 50-year-old radio reporter was an outspoken critic of alleged corruption and cronyism in the Central African nation, often singling out government officials by name.

International NGOs say the regime of President Paul Biya, 91, who has ruled with an iron fist for more than 41 years, routinely curtails opposition.

No trial date has yet been set for the suspects, who include Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, an influential businessman and owner of Anecdote media group, who was arrested two weeks after Martinez's murder.

"He has been ordered to stand trial on a fabricated charge — complicity in torture," Belinga's lawyer Charles Tchoungang told AFP.

The court order said "sufficient charges against the indicted" justified ending the judicial enquiry and setting a trial.

Maxime Leopold Eko Eko, former head of Cameroon's DGRE spy agency, must also stand trial on charges of complicity in torture, the order added.

The DGRE's operations director, Justin Danwe, faces charges of complicity in murder.

But many Cameroonians fear justice may never be done in a country ranked by Reporters Without Borders as 118th out of 180 for press freedom.

After both Belinga and Eko Eko were freed from detention without formal explanation in December, a new investigative judge — the third — was named to handle the case.

Rights group, Human Rights Watch, says freedom of expression continues to be restricted in Cameroon, noting that three independent journalists were killed there last year.

Separatist groups in Cameroon recently took to social media to speak against the selection of Njie Clinton, a 30-year-old English-speaking player, to the nation’s team that played at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON, tournament that is being held in Ivory Coast.

Clinton’s selection gave the impression that there is harmony between English and French speakers in Cameroon, the rebels said, adding that anyone who supported the Indomitable Lions would be an enemy of the struggle for independence.

Cameroon on Saturday was knocked out of AFCON after losing 2-0 to Nigeria in the round of 16. Prior to losing to the West African football giants, the Central African nation qualified out of the group stages of the tournament in second place and with four points.

While the Indomitable Lions played in Ivory Coast, three supporters were killed, and others abducted, Cameroon authorities from the nation’s English-speaking regions said.

The rebels also destroyed or stole televisions and radios, authorities added.

“I wish to use the last energy to condemn the attack on football lovers who were supporting the Lions,” said Ndi Tsembom Elvis, the secretary general of Cameroon’s Football Federation in the Northwest region.

“It is the same thing like you support a club in the Premier League, and you are not based in England. So, I find these acts of killing people, attacking people who were supporting the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon as totally unacceptable," he added.

Tsembom said despite the attacks, fans came out in large numbers to cheer the Indomitable Lions in zones that were considered safe.

Separatists also attacked several road construction workers and chased them away from sites in Donga Mantung, an administrative unit near the border with Nigeria, Rogers Nforgwei, the president of the Wimbum Cultural and Development Association said.

Speaking to VOA via a messaging application from Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s Northwest region, Nforgwei said "it is very regrettable that such acts are being perpetrated against a project which will permit people to travel conveniently and cost effectively to do business and move their sick to hospitals.”

“We condemn these acts of evil and we call on the community to be vigilant," he said.

In response to authorities, separatists claimed the attack on the workers. They said the attack happened because the workers did not obey their instructions but gave no further details.

Deben Tchoffo, the governor of Cameroon’s Northwest region, said troops were deployed to stop the attacks.

Fighters who surrender will be pardoned, but troops will kill those who continue fighting, Tchoffo said.

The separatist conflict broke out in 2016 when Anglophone Cameroonians protested discrimination by the nation's Francophone majority.

Several farmers told Reuters that they have been selling their beans at prices ranging from 2,000 to 2,200 CFA francs ($3.67) per kilogram, up from 750 to 1,290 CFA francs/kg last season.

New York cocoa futures rose to a 46-year high on Monday as crop problems in West Africa tightened global supplies. Ghana cocoa port arrivals are down around 50% year-on-year so far this season, while Ivory Coast's are down more than 35%.

Cameroon is not expecting a similar drop in production. It targets around 300,000 metric tons of cocoa annually, making it the world's fourth biggest producer in recent years.

"I have made much more money from cocoa sales, which has enabled me to clear an overdue loan," said Susan Itoe, a cocoa farmer near Konye in the South West region.

Cameroon's guaranteed cocoa farmgate price for the 2023/24 season was set at 1,500 CFA francs/kg. But the actual prices paid to farmers are flexible depending on the market and have risen even higher.

In Ivory Coast and Ghana, by contrast, prices are fixed for the entire season.

"Cameroon is benefiting from the malaise of Ghana and Ivory Coast following flooding and cocoa swollen shoot virus," said Epie Promise Ngolepie, a cocoa consultant at agri-tech company Help Farmers Cameroon, who told Reuters that prices were expected to fall by 2025 as production picks up again in West Africa.

The high cost of inputs and high cost of transporting the produce due to bad roads were, however, eroding the gains, he added.

"Price has always been our problem ... So this increase is well appreciated especially as we have improved the quality of our cocoa," said Esapa Patrick Enyong, president of the South West Farmers' Cooperative Union, which groups thousands of farmers in the country's largest cocoa production basin.

Cameroon was recently added to Annex 'C' of the International Cocoa Agreement, which places it on the list of countries producing fine flavored cocoa.

The liberalization of the country's cocoa trade since the 1990s has also contributed to the higher prices, said Michael Ndoping, general manager of the National Cocoa and Coffee Board, NCCB.

"All these factors put together make the cocoa trade these days very encouraging and we hope this will last for some time," Ndoping said.