Some 160,000 people were forced to flee their localities in January alone in Burkina Faso, in the face of deadly jihadist attacks hitting the country, bringing the total number of displaced to 1.7 million, according to several NGOs.
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Since January 2019, the displaced population in Burkina has increased by 2000% with 1.7 million people uprooted.
More than two-thirds are children
,” says a press release from several NGOs including Doctors of the World and the Norwegian Refugee Council.
The figure of 160,000 in January is one of the highest for a single month since the start of the security crisis, according to these organizations.
By comparison, 237,000 people were displaced between January and July 2021, according to official figures.
The signatories are also concerned that the crisis in Ukraine will have an impact on humanitarian aid in Burkina Faso.
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Some donors have already indicated that they will cut their funding by 70% in order to support operations in Ukraine.
We are very worried that this will become a trend, making access to care and basic services even more complicated for internally displaced people in Burkina
”, fears Safia Torche, general director of Doctors of the World in this country.
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The crisis in Ukraine will probably have an upward impact on the price of cereals, making an already bad situation even worse
", supports the director for Burkina of Action against Hunger, Grégoire Brou, who estimates at 3 million the number of food insecure people.
In the wake of its neighbors Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of violence attributed to armed jihadist movements, affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, which have killed more than 2,000 people.
Since late January, a military junta led by Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba has been in power after a military coup that overthrew President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré.