Cameroon separatists declare brief ceasefire for Pope Leo XIV visit

Armed separatists in Cameroon’s English-speaking west said they will suspend attacks for three days during Pope Leo XIV’s visit, offering a rare test of whether outside moral authority can open even a narrow lane for peace in a conflict that has dragged on for years.

The alliance said the safe-travel passage would run from April 15 to April 17 across territory it describes as Ambazonia. It urged armed factions to respect the window so civilians, pilgrims, visiting dignitaries and the pope’s entourage can move without fear as the pontiff travels through the country.

Pope Leo XIV left on April 13 for an 11-day Apostolic Journey to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea. The Vatican’s schedule calls for 11 cities, 6 greetings, 10 addresses and 8 homilies across the trip, with the Cameroon leg set for April 15 to April 18. The pope is expected in Bamenda on April 16, placing him at the center of the country’s most volatile Anglophone region.

The announcement matters because Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions have been the heart of a separatist war since protests over the treatment of English-speaking Cameroonians escalated in 2016 and the crackdown intensified in 2017. Human Rights Watch said the violence has left more than 638,000 people internally displaced across the Anglophone regions, at least 1.7 million in need of humanitarian aid and at least 6,000 civilians dead since late 2016 at the hands of government forces and separatist fighters.

The alliance that announced the pause said it includes the Ambazonia Governing Council, the Ambazonian Prisoners of Conscience and other separatist movements, and that the truce applies across the areas it controls. A spokesperson for the AGovC said the decision reflected restraint and respect for human dignity even amid conflict.

The gesture comes with obvious limits. Cameroon’s government had not immediately responded, and past pauses by separatist groups have not always held across all armed factions. Still, the timing, with Bamenda on the pope’s itinerary and the country under intense security pressure, gives the announcement unusual weight.

International Crisis Group said militant secessionists symbolically proclaimed the independence of Ambazonia on October 1, 2017, after the crisis deepened. Nearly nine years later, the brief ceasefire may prove less a settlement than a test: whether a war that has become entrenched can still bend, even briefly, to pressure from a figure whose authority is moral rather than military.