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Burkina Faso

Humanitarian Action for Children 2024 - Burkina Faso

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HIGHLIGHTS

  • The people of Burkina Faso continue to experience a multidimensional humanitarian crisis that has worsened since 2019. More than 2 million people are displaced inside the country. A de facto blockade by armed groups of areas where more than 1 million people live or have sought refuge has deprived people of free movement and necessary supplies.
    And the number of schools closed due to attacks has increased by 50 per cent in one year to reach one quarter of all schools in the country, impacting the learning of more than 1 million children.

  • A Rapid SMART (Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions) nutritional survey was carried out in July 2023 in 25 municipalities (most hard-to-reach, and those hosting the largest number of internally displaced persons in the six most conflictaffected regions). It revealed a wasting prevalence of more than 15 per cent in seven municipalities and more than 20 per cent in two.

  • UNICEF requires $239 million in 2024 to continue investing in innovative mechanisms that address the short- and long-term vulnerabilities of women and children, with a focus on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), child protection, education and nutrition interventions.

HUMANITARIAN SITUATION AND NEEDS

Burkina Faso, a landlocked country with an estimated population of 20 million, continues to be affected by a crisis whose hallmarks are armed conflict/insecurity; economic hardship; demographic pressure; political fragility and climate change-related shocks. This all has significant consequences on the country's sustainable development and on peace and respect for children's rights. Insecurity has spread to touch almost the entire country, resulting in the massive internal displacement of more than 2 million people, 58 per cent of them children; it has created needs and reduced the humanitarian access necessary to address them.

People's access to basic social services is challenging in several regions. Around 3.6 million people have been deprived of access to health care, with 397 health facilities – 19 per cent of all such facilities nationwide – closed, and 381 operating at minimum capacity. Into this breach of services a resurgence of such diseases as measles, dengue fever and chikungunya has come. Food insecurity has increased,16 and the nutrition situation in the country has worsened. An estimated 172,133 children under 5 years of age are wasted, 84 per cent of them in the most conflict-affected regions, including in areas that are hard to reach.

A major water crisis is also affecting the people of Burkina Faso, rooted in structural problems that predate the current crisis of insecurity but that are compounded by both the insecurity and the consequences of climate change. An estimated 3.2 million people have lost access to water due to insecurity. At the same time, Burkina Faso is among the top 20 countries for the effects climate change is having on children, with the impact of climate change causing a severe deterioration of the humanitarian situation.

The education sector, already fragile before the crisis (for example, one out of two school-aged children was out of school in 201420), has further deteriorated. Twenty-four per cent of schools (6,149 schools) are closed due to insecurity and attacks on infrastructure and staff. This has deprived more than 1 million children (including more than 500,000 girls) of their education and affected more than 31,000 teachers.

In this difficult humanitarian context, children remain the most affected and are exposed to all forms of violence, neglect and exploitation, including child labour and recruitment into armed groups. A total of 1,568 violations against 1,157 children were verified in 2022, including 366 grave violations against 294 children that had occurred in previous years and but were verified in 2022. Given that access for monitors remains a challenge, this information does not represent the full scale of violations against children.