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The forgotten crisis in Burkina Faso

For the second year in a row Burkina Faso is the world’s most neglected displacement crisis, according to NRC.

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Burkina Faso
Yentema is holding his young daughter in his arms outside the mosque in Fada. Of the Ahmadiyya community - a minority within Islam - that fled in March 2023, many have since crossed the border into neighbouring countries to find jobs. The money they send back to their displaced families stuck in limbo is an important lifeline, and for some, the only income they have after they lost their land and animals to the armed groups.  [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
By Ingebjorg Karstad
Published On 3 Jun 2024

Kongoussi, Burkina Faso – The refugee crisis in Burkina Faso, which has been engulfed in conflict since 2019, is the deepest of a number of neglected crises across Africa, according to a new report.

The West African country tops the list for neglected crises for the second year running, a report released by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) on Monday showed.

With a record-high 707,000 new displacements within the country’s borders, the humanitarian crisis in Burkina Faso continued unabated in 2023, while hundreds of thousands of people were cut off from aid.

The number of people killed in violence doubled last year, with over 8,400 deaths. Meanwhile, the number of Burkinabe refugees seeking safety in neighbouring countries almost tripled, reaching a total of 148,317 according to UNHCR figures.

An unprecedented 42,000 people suffered catastrophic levels of food insecurity and up to two million civilians were trapped in 36 blockaded towns across the country by the year’s end. As armed groups imposed movement bans, little to no humanitarian assistance reached some of these areas. At least half a million people were cornered into a near-total “aid blind spot”.

With over 6,100 schools closed by spring 2023, Burkina Faso was home to nearly half of all closed schools in Central and West Africa. Up to 400 health facilities were shut down, and about as many were only able to provide minimal services, leaving 3.6 million people without access to healthcare – a 70 percent increase from 2022.

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On February 8, 2023, two staff members at Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, were murdered by an armed group in northwestern Burkina Faso. This was the first time since the start of the conflict that national aid workers of an international NGO were killed while providing life-saving aid.

As road access to many areas remained plagued by security incidents, humanitarian organisations increasingly relied on limited air transport, escalating operational costs and further restricting the amount of assistance reaching people in need. Funding dwindled, which aggravated the financial strain on humanitarian organisations. Only 39 percent of the response plan funding was covered in 2023, down from 43 percent in 2022.

Independent media coverage decreased as several international news outlets and journalists were banned from working in Burkina Faso in 2023. Additionally, the domestic press corps shied away from sensitive topics due to the heightened risks.

An all-time high of 6.3 million people will need humanitarian assistance in 2024 and more than two million remain internally displaced. While some have started to return home, concerns are growing about the protection of civilians. Returns, which the Kampala Convention states must be voluntary, dignified and safe, are set to be a major humanitarian issue for 2024.

Burkina faso
Mariam, a mother of five, is sitting outside the small shelter her family built after they fled to Kongoussi, in northern Burkina Faso, after armed groups made life in their village unbearable.   "My biggest worry as a mother is that my children are hungry, and I don't have enough food to feed them. Sometimes they cry because they are so hungry, and it breaks my heart. They don’t grow like they used to do in our village. They are losing weight, and so am I. Some days I skip my meal to save a small portion for them for the evening. I used to be a beautiful woman but look at me now. I’m hungry all the time. It’s hard," said Mariam. [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
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Burkina Faso
Mariam has been in Kongoussi, northern Burkina Faso, for less than a year. She is cooking a small portion of corn for her five children and husband. They only have resources to make one meal per day, and this small pot of corn is all the whole family will eat all day. They have one tiny shelter that is really too small for them all to fit inside, but now that the rainy season started, they can no longer sleep outside and must cram together in a space also occupied by their few personal belongings. They have made small "walls" on the ground to stop the rain from flowing in. "The biggest challenge as a displaced person is the tiny shelter and the fact that we are unable to get enough food to eat," Mariam says. "It's not possible to go back. The village is under control by the armed groups, so we have to stay here." [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
Burkina Faso
At the end of the dry season temperatures are soaring in Burkina Faso. Most days the air is filled with sand, making it hard to breathe. Weather reports say this year is even hotter than normal, with afternoon temperatures reaching 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit), accompanied by strong winds. Climate change is making the region drier and hotter, adding extra challenges for those who had to flee their homes.  [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
Burkina Faso
The living conditions for the internally displaced in Burkina Faso are often poor and people lack even the most basic services. In May, as the rainy season starts, many are concerned about how they will manage to stay dry as the flimsy shelters are often damaged by wind and rain. Most families at this site in Fada have no access to materials to elevate them from the ground, making the nights sleepless as rain and mud fills the shelter.  [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
Burkina Faso
"Our greatest need is peace. Because if there’s peace, me and my family can go back to the village and will be able to take care of ourselves. If we have peace, all the other things will fall into place," says Barke. He has been displaced since May 2022 and now resides in Fada, eastern Burkina Faso.   "The armed group attacked our village and the outpost of volunteers that was there. During this attack they kidnapped my eldest brother. It was not only him. Several men were kidnapped. In the clashes 13 volunteers were killed. After that we ran away. Until now we have no news about him." Barke is physically handicapped and unable to work often. Of his five wives, only Fati is with him the day we meet him. "We mainly survive on handouts. Our neighbours have really helped us. We only cook in the morning, and if we have some left, we eat at night, but some days we go without food," adds Fati. [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
Burkina Faso
"They killed my brother with knife. They killed him like they slaughter animals," said a man in his 40s who wanted to remain anonymous, fearing for his life. "It all started in our village with some selective kidnappings in 2019. They would come into the village on motorcycles, kill someone and then leave again. They targeted leaders in our community. The ones that were well known. The ones with an education. They eliminated them one by one. When this started nobody felt safe sleeping in their own house. I felt my life was in danger, so I chose to flee. Then one of my brothers got killed. Then the next one. They killed him in a rough way, like you kill an animal," he says. After this, the whole family fled, and they have now been in Fada since 2022. The two killed brothers left behind wives and children, and he now takes care of 21 family members. "Sometimes we wonder, with so much we have experienced of pain already this early in life, how long can we survive like this? What is coming next? How long will we stay alive? It takes a lot of strength to be able to watch your family suffer so much without being able to help as much as you want to. To not want to run away from it all." "To get enough money to eat, no one is resting in the family. I am selling shoes, riding my motorcycle around to find customers. My grandmother is selling seeds that older people like to chew, it’s like tobacco. The women are getting mangoes that they sell by the road. And then we have poultry that we raise and then sell. Life is just about survival now. You work in the morning to have food for the evening. There’s no room to save anything for any other need or investment." 'We feel safe here in Fada. We can sleep at night without being scared of attacks from the armed groups. At home we could not do that. Still, just a few kilometres outside the city, villages are attacked, and people have to flee their homes. The fighting is coming closer to us, and we worry.' 'What we really need is for peace to come back. Peace is what will help us to get our lives back, to get us back home where we can take care of ourselves.' [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
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Burkina Faso
"The armed group came to our mosque one night, during prayer. They were four, on two motorcycles. I was in the city that day and got a phone call from a friend telling me not to come back to the village as they were looking for me and had threatened to kill me if they found me," says Yatara, the imam in a small farming village close to Kantchari in eastern Burkina Faso. The community belongs to the Ahmadiyya minority.  "The threats towards the community did not stop. Every night they came to our village, making threats and saying ‘give us your youth’! But we resisted. Then they gave us an ultimatum: Either you leave, or you join us. Of course we would not join them. Islam stands for peace. We will not kill anybody," says Yatara.   In March 2023, two months after the first threat, the community decided it was time to leave and it took two weeks to get ready and move their belongings to Fada, the provincial capital.   "One man stayed behind in the village to look after the animals, but they found him and killed him. Then in August a convoy went back to the village and we learned that there is nobody there. Everything is burned down. Everything! All the animals have been stolen. The cows. The goats. Gone. All our wealth is gone." In Fada, the community was given a plot of land to live on and a mosque to use from another Ahmadiyya congregation. They were also given a few basic shelters, a water pump. The children are able to attend the small school run by UNICEF close by. But the well has very little water so they need to buy water from other private wells to have enough. Jobs are very hard to find.   "Many of our young men, more than 40, have gone to other countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast and Mali to find jobs and send money back to their families. This is how most of the community survives as we cannot farm here and have lost all our animals. When we lived in the village, we had everything we needed, but here we had to cut down on meals. Now we only eat only twice a day, morning and night. Mostly meals based on millet." [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
Burkina Faso
"When I wake up in the morning I sell breakfast, coffee with milk and bread. Then I go to the market and buy two kilos of meat and then I prepare a barbeque that I sell to people passing by. This is how I manage to get some income. This is something new to me, but we cannot be farmers here in Fada, so I have to think anew," says Jaques as he sits in the small food stall close by his new home in Fada.  He fled from Koulga with his wife and six children two years ago after the armed groups gave them a three-day ultimatum to leave their home or be killed. "In the village, we were farmers. We harvested good crops like corn. We had goats. We did not need to buy firewood because we lived close to a forest. We had plenty of water. The animals had enough food from the nature. We felt safe. We had everything we needed to live a good life. When the rainy season started in the village I would go out and buy a 50-kilo bag of rice and beans to feed us through the season, but when we came here we had to reduce the amount of every type of food. Even food we found boring before, we now long for. We used to eat early in the morning, at noon, at 2pm and then dinner. Now, breakfast could be only coffee and then at noon we try to have a main meal. If the children have eaten at school then they will not get more food here at home. We recently received two bags of corn and one bag of rice. This is all the food support we got since we arrived," Jaques adds.  [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC] "We don’t have any savings for emergency expenses. I earn too little. If I have a child that get sick, I will have to spend the money I earned that same day."  "It’s not easy to see your children like this. To not be able to give them the food they need and want," says Jaques' wife Lompo. 
Burkina Faso
"The firewood you see here is what we were able to collect from the forest around the city while it was still green. It needs to dry before we can use it. But recently they have forbidden people from going to those areas to look for firewood. Women who went to collect it ran into the armed groups who are fighting the army in the outskirts of town, so it got too dangerous. The other reason is that people who own the land are complaining that it leads to deforestation and destroys their livelihood," says Jaques. "What do we do when this pile is empty? I have no extra money to buy firewood." [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
Burkina Faso
"As a grandmother, when you have your grandchildren around you, you want to spoil them and make them happy but now we are unable to give them anything. Back in the village, we used to farm in the rainy season. I used to have goats and sheep. We never lacked food. I could also earn some money by selling fruit from the bush at the market or make some bread and sell for breakfast. This way I was able to have my own little economy and help the family. It felt good to provide. Here we just sit still," says Aicha.  "Here, young and old, we are all starving. My message to those who can hear me is that those that can provide for us do so before we pass away. We don’t want to die before they start providing," says Toumbourou, Aicha’s husband.  [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
Burkina Faso
"We have not received any assistance for a long, long time. In periods like this, when we do not have anything else to cook, I go and pick leaves and boil them in water. This pot will feed more than 10 people in my family. This week we have only eaten leaves most days," said Asseta, a displaced mother now living in Kongoussi, northern Burkina Faso.  Collecting leaves for consumption is not at all an uncommon way for people to survive at this point in time in Burkina Faso.   The total funding to the Burkina Faso humanitarian response plan was $347m in 2023, of the $876m requested – making the response just 39.6 percent funded (OCHA). [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]
Burkina Faso
The crisis in Burkina Faso has further worsened since last year. Violence killed more people and forced civilians to flee more times in 2023 than in any year since the conflict began in the country in 2019. Up to two million people, including 1.3 million people in need, are living in blockaded areas, unable to access aid regularly (FONGIH and 2024 HNO).  [Ingebjorg Karstad/NRC]

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