Urgent assistance needed for 14,000 people fleeing after massacre in Burkina Faso – Global issues
According to a warning from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, nearly 16,000 mostly women and childrenwas moved to Dori, after gunmen killed at least 79 people in the town of Seytenga, near the border with Niger.
House-to-house killers
“Newcomers to Dori told of armed men going door to door to find and kill adult males, which means Many people have witnessed the death of their husband or father, said UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh. “Nearly two-thirds of those fleeing Seytenga are under the age of 18.”
Today, hundreds of people fleeing attackers have no choice but to sleep by the side of the road until they find shelter, the UNHCR official told journalists in Geneva.
Many more have been received by host and displaced families already in Dori, while others have found vacancies in refugee reception and transit centres.
More Burkinabe is expected to come to Dori in the coming dayswhile some 15,500 people sought shelter across the border in the Tillabéri region of Niger, where resources were scarce.
Mass displacement is happening
The displacement crisis in Burkina Faso is one of the world’s fastest growing humanitarian emergencies.
Number of internally displaced people reached 1.9 million at the end of AprilUNHCR said, citing government figures.
Urgent needs are addressed
To the Burkinabe government, UNHCR and its partners have offered to help meet the most pressing needs. These include providing shelter and essential supplies, as well as water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, and psychosocial support.
But non-State armed groups have attacked water supplies and infrastructure in the country, including a recent attack on Dori’s main water supply, and demand for WASH could grow rapidly. quickly, UNHCR warned.
To help the sleeping families, UN humanitarians helped the regional government relocate them to three existing resettlement sites in Dori. Additional plots of land have also been identified to accommodate potential future visitors.
“UNHCR and partners are preparing to increase supplies of emergency shelters and core relief itemsincluding sleeping mats, soaps and cooking utensils, for more than 1,000 families,” explains Mr. Saltmarsh.
Narrow space
He noted that the town of Dori had tripled and now home to nearly 76,000 Burkinabe has displaced, as have about 20,000 refugees from Mali.
Despite the State’s efforts to provide education and healthcare to newcomers, the United Nations agency warned that competition for resources – water and land for grasslands and agriculture, plus with rising inflation and fuel shortages -“all are experimenting with peaceful coexistence between different communities“.
Other countries in the Sahel – Chad, Mali and Niger – also face a combination of violence, poverty and the effects of climate change. More than 2.5 million people have been displaced from their homes in the Sahel region in the past decade.
So far, the $591 million humanitarian appeal for Burkina Faso has only been funded 15%.
