Months of tension and social protests in Burkina Faso culminated this Monday, January 24, in a military coup. The political crisis is thus now added to a extremely fragile context, characterized by increasingly violent conflict and a spiraling population displacement that has left many people struggling to find food, water, shelter and medical care. The humanitarian organizations they have also been affected by violence, making it extremely difficult to provide much-needed aid.
For more than a decade, the central Sahel region, mainly Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, has been the scene of conflicts between various armed groups and government and international forces. In 2021, Burkina Faso became the largest source of violence in the region, with a sharp rise in kidnappings and attacks, like the one that happened in Solhan in June, when 160 people died. While large-scale attacks like this are covered by the international media, most routine attacks go unnoticed.
According to the UN, more than 1.5 million people in a country with 20 million have been forced to leave their homes, the majority in the last three years, since at the end of 2018 there were just over 50,000 displaced people. Most of these population movements have occurred in the Sahel, Center-North and East regions, but the conflict is progressively affecting areas that were previously considered stable.
Violence can break out suddenly, so the population often flees with nothing but the clothes on their backs. A woman named Salamata, who now lives with her husband and four children in a camp for displaced people in Barsalogho, in the North-Central region, told us last year: “One morning, we saw the whole village empty. Everyone was running So we took the kids and started running too. We were barefoot, but we didn’t stop until we got to this place, more than 35 kilometers from our home. Once here, we found out that many of our relatives had been murdered and that our houses and properties had been destroyed. I may never see our people again.”
The impact of the conflict on the local population has become increasingly pronounced. Beyond the direct effects of physical violence, many people have lost their homes and livelihoods. For rural communities, running away from home means losing crops and livestock. For the next few months, many will not be able to plant or harvest any crops. With so many people depending on agriculture and livestock to feed their families, the availability of food is a major concern, which is why Médecins Sans Frontières and other organizations are distributing food and treating malnourished children.
In the displaced persons camps, the conditions in which the people live are very precarious, with inadequate stores for the rainy season, rudimentary sanitation and insufficient drinking water. People living in these camps tell us that they often have to walk several kilometers and then wait several hours for water to drink, cook and wash.
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country, where it doesn’t rain too much and where the availability of water is decreasing due to climate change. Although local communities do their best to house the large numbers of displaced people arriving, the increased demand for water is causing widespread shortages. Building wells and trucking water is a priority for our teams, as well as for other organizations.
We are deployed in five of the 13 regions of the country and our workers are witnessing the effects of the conflict on people seeking medical attention. In addition to needing treatment for physical injuries caused by violence, many patients suffer from psychological impact having seen people killed in front of them and having seen their houses and crops burned and their possessions and livelihoods reduced to nothing.
The precarious living conditions expose people to a high risk of disease, including endemic ailments such as malaria, a disease that 11 million Burkinabe suffered in 2020. Overcrowded conditions also increase the likelihood of respiratory tract infectious diseases, while poor sanitation and water shortages increase the risk of outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as diarrhea and cholera.
It is clear that the population needs more food, more water and better access to medical care in all the regions currently affected by the conflict in Burkina Faso. However, there is a shortfall in the provision of humanitarian assistance that is due to several factors, including administrative obstacles, lack of funding and, above all, insecurity.
Extreme levels of insecurity often prevent people from getting around to see a doctor, while many people cannot afford transportation to hospital. At the same time, insecurity sometimes prevents health workers, including MSF workers, from reaching communities in need.
Today, medical and humanitarian teams working in Burkina Faso face risks. MSF staff, as well as those of other organizations and the Ministry of Health, have been attacked and sometimes kidnapped. They have stolen our ambulances and destroyed health centers. In some places, improvised explosive devices have been planted on roads, making travel potentially deadly.
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Due to these dangers, we have seen a significant reduction in the number of midwives from the Ministry of Health in the Eastern region and there has been the closure of health centers in the Sahel region after attacks on medical personnel. According to the Ministry of Health, with data from June 2021, 357 health structures throughout the country were closed or not fully operational as a result of the violence. In addition, there is a shortage of specialist doctors, including surgeons, anesthesiologists and midwives, in all areas of Burkina Faso hit by violence.
All this panorama has undoubtedly contributed to the increase in tensions, whose final consequences so far have led to the coup d’état last Monday. And while the world’s attention is focused on the political crisis and insecurity, the humanitarian crisis in Burkina Faso is deteriorating by leaps and bounds and goes unnoticed.