OCTOBER12’25: Three Million Cameroonians With Disabilities Excluded From Voting, That Should Trouble Us

By Princeley Njukang

On October 12, 2025, Cameroonians will once again head to the polls to elect, possibly, the country’s next president. I use the word “possibly” deliberately. For 43 years, elections in Cameroon have followed a predictable script with the same ending. Yet, even in this scripted reality, elections carry something vital: hope. Hope that promises made could become promises kept. Hope that change – however slim – remains possible.
But not all Cameroonians are permitted that hope. I am talking about the more than 3.48 million citizens with disabilities – a figure from the Ministry of Social Affairs – who have been pushed to the margins of our political life for decades. As someone living with visual impairment, this issue is not just political to me; it is a lived reality. This year is no different. Out of the twelve presidential candidates approved by the Constitutional Council, not one has articulated a vision for the inclusion of persons with disabilities. Not one manifesto mentions the rights, needs, or aspirations of persons with disabilities. We are treated as if we are invisible – a people without political rights or direction.
The numbers make this exclusion undeniable. According to ELECAM, only 33,985 voters with disabilities are registered, out of a potential electorate of over one million. That is just about 3 percent of the estimated potential electorate of persons with disabilities. The remaining 97 percent of eligible voters with disabilities will stay outside the electoral process, not because they do not want to vote, but because they cannot. According to a study on political participation conducted by Sightsavers in 2022, people with disabilities are 1.5 times more likely not to have a birth certificate, twice as likely not to possess a national ID card, and 1.5 times more likely not to have a voters’ card compared to people without disabilities. They are also 1.5 times more likely never to have voted. These are structural barriers, not a lack of interest.
Our participation is unequal and undignified – the kind where I have to get to a polling station and have an untrusted individual read the contents of ballot papers for me at the cost of being misled – as if the electoral code was foolish to make voting a secret act. The kind where, as a hearing-impaired person, I can get to a polling station and receive the treatment of a madman because no one understands whatever I am doing with my hands, and where a mobility-impaired person can be carried like an object, bereft of respect, into a polling station. Political participation and inclusion for us is akin to a party where we are called to strip naked – a game of humiliation.
Government officials admit this. In June, Social Affairs minister, Pauline Irène Nguene, said: “Our democracy cannot be complete when millions of citizens remain on the margins of decision-making processes. Nothing for us without us.” But if the government truly believed this, then why do we remain locked out of the electoral process? Why do the barriers grow taller with every election cycle?
The problem is not a lack of laws. Cameroon ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2021. Article 29 of that treaty obliges states to ensure the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in political and public life. Nationally, Law No. 2010/002 on the Protection and Promotion of Persons with Disabilities also affirms the same right. But in Cameroon, laws are often written to be shelved. As a country, we are good at making commitments, cursed at implementing them.
This exclusion is not abstract. I have lived it. The 2018 presidential elections were the first elections that I followed with rapt attention. A year before that, I had been bundled into the school bus of a government secondary school in Buea, where I went to seek admission – and sent home. The principal of the school told me that her school could not admit blind people, that they could not take the risk of having me contaminate young and bright leaders of tomorrow with my blindness. So, in 2018, I watched the campaigns from the sidelines, hoping that at least one candidate would touch on issues affecting persons with disabilities. None did. You can argue that our plight is subsumed into these candidates’ social plans, but three million people do not get to be reduced into that argument, unless they are not full humans. Today as a journalist, a registered voter, and still a blind Cameroonian, I find myself asking the same question: why are we still invisible? Why are we still too insignificant to earn even a single line in their manifestos?
For persons with disabilities in conflict-hit regions like the Northwest and Southwest, the barriers are even harsher. Displacement, armed violence, and humanitarian neglect combine to make political participation nearly impossible. As Human Rights Watch documented in 2019, many disabled people in these regions cannot even access basic services, let alone exercise the right to vote.
The result is a democracy hollowed out by selective inclusion. Elections that silence 14 percent of the population are not elections. They are rituals of exclusion. And when political manifestos erase us, it signals that budgets, policies, and priorities will continue to erase us too.
But this does not have to be the case. Practical steps exist. Polling stations can be made accessible for disabled persons. Voter education materials can be produced in Braille, audio, and sign language. Electoral staff can be trained to provide dignified assistance. Mobile or home voting options can be introduced for those unable to travel to polling stations. Also, ensuring access to birth certificates, national IDs, and voter cards is foundational, according to the Sightsavers study mentioned earlier, and would dramatically improve participation by disabled persons. These are not luxuries; they are basic measures already practiced elsewhere and would make the participation of disabled persons real.
What is missing is not knowledge but will. Political parties must treat persons with disabilities as full citizens, not as an afterthought. Civil society and the media must stop staying silent and start demanding accountability. The state must finally translate its words – Article 29, Law 2010/002, ministerial speeches – into lived realities.
Elections are more than a choosing of leaders. They are a test of whose voice matters. On October 12, Cameroon will be tested. If we continue down this path as a country, three million citizens will remain outside the gates of democracy – forced to watch as others decide their future.
Inclusion is not charity. It is justice. Until it is recognized as such, our elections will remain what they too often have been: promises unfulfilled, voices unheard, and hopes denied.