In 2022, Burkina Faso will continue to confront a multidimensional crisis. Nearly one fifth of the national population now needs humanitarian assistance. Widespread insecurity, violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and reduced presence of the State in areas severely impacted by conflict have driven more than 1.4 million people from their homes, and affected access to basic services and livelihoods for an additional 2.3 million people. The conflict has exacerbated chronic vulnerability to climatic variance (drought, flooding). Combined with the effects of COVID-19, this left 2.9 million people severely food insecure (IPC 3+) during the 2021 lean season.
Insecurity now marks over half the country. The reported number of security incidents has risen from 211 in 2019 to 720 in the first eight months of 2021.1 The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) increased by 32 per cent between December 2020 (1.1 million) and September 2021 (1.4 million).2 Increased violence against civilians in 2021 makes additional large-scale displacements likely. These population movements are often preceded by serious human rights violations, primarily affecting women, children, elderly people, people living with disabilities, and host communities who continue to receive and support new internally displaced persons (IDPs). Nearly 80 per cent of registered IDPs are women and children under 15 years of age (53 per cent female; 54 per cent boys and girls under 15 years of age). The number of Burkinabè seeking asylum in neighbouring countries has also increased, doubling to 38,000 in just six months by October 2021.
Louda, Burkina Faso
The Louda market garden is part of a resilience activity, aiming to go beyond food assistance. Currently, there are more than 1.1 million IDPs in Burkina Faso due to insecurity. Many of these people have relied on food assistance for more than two years. The market garden project aims to promote social cohesion and reduce the strain that IDPs put on host communities' scarce resources. IDPs and the hosting community work side by side to grow vegetables for home consumption and selling. This project allows people to acquire new agricultural skills, generate an income and have access to nutritious fresh fruits and vegetables.
WFP/Evelyn Fey
In 2021, Burkina Faso has also experienced three major epidemics in addition to COVID-19: measles, vaccine-derived polio virus type 2, and hepatitis E. For more than 900,000 people, access to health care is affected by the closure or reduced capacity of 367 health centres in seven regions, while the number of closed schools increased by 20 per cent to 2,735 in eight regions in October 2021, affecting 316,000 children.
Projected situation in 2022 and beyond
As the crisis continues to spread rapidly, the humanitarian community has adopted a national approach to planning for 2022, in contrast to the focus on specific regions of previous years. It also has decided a stricter targeting and is working to ensure the continuity of approaches across the humanitarian-development continuum. As a result, the total number of people in need of humanitarian assistance stands at 3.5 million in 2022. The most vulnerable groups continue to be IDPs, refugees, people in highly insecure areas without regular access to services, and communities hosting large numbers of IDPs. Women, children and the elderly, as well as people living with disabilities, have the greatest concentration of needs.
Nearing the end of the third year of sustained, large-scale humanitarian consequences of the crisis, 73 per cent of IDP households have been displaced for over 12 months and 34 per cent for over 24 months. More IDPs express their intention to integrate in their host locations (mostly urban settings) rather than return to their places of origin; up to 34 per cent of IDPs now compared to 9 per cent in 2020. This foreshadows the need to shift the type of support towards achieving durable solutions and stepping up nexus-related engagement. Unless further investment in complementary humanitarian and development approaches materializes, continued displacement and limited access to basic services, such as water and sanitation, education, health care and protection, are likely to increase vulnerability and needs in 2022 and beyond.
Barsalogho, Burkina Faso
A young girl at the Dori refugee camp in Barsalogho.
OCHA/Giles Clarke
Inconsistent rainfall in 2021 coupled with a lack of harvests in some areas due to drought and insecurity have had a major impact on agricultural production. In the Nord, production has dropped by 50 per cent on average and up to 80 per cent in some pockets. This will result in additional food and nutritional needs well ahead of the 2022 lean season (July-September). Additional efforts across the humanitarian-development spectrum are required to enhance off-season cultivation and resilience initiatives for affected communities.
Moreover, water scarcity, combined with poor access to clean water and to improved sanitation and hygiene, is increasing the impact of water-related diseases and protection risks for the most vulnerable women and children, who are most often responsible for fetching water for the household.
Response priorities in 2022
Despite the continued deterioration of the security environment, the humanitarian community has made considerable effort in 2021 to extend operations to a greater number of people in need and into hard-to-reach areas. As a result, some access improvements have been achieved through improved community engagement and collaboration across CMCoord, UNHAS and logistics platforms, for example in the Sahel and Nord regions.
Cumulatively, the humanitarian community reached at least 1.6 million people in the first half of 2021, or 55 per cent of the annual target, despite funding shortages. The humanitarian team undertook a strict reprioritizing effort for the last quarter of 2021, which is systematically advancing into the 2022 planning. In 2022, it will be essential to further strengthen community engagement and accountability to expand humanitarian acceptance and access, and to reinforce collaboration with development and peace partners to ensure enhanced engagement across the triple nexus and to help address the root causes of the conflict.
Burkina Faso HRP
The results of the 2021 community perception and satisfaction survey again show that affected communities rank food security, health care and adequate shelter among their most urgent needs, as well as increased access to basic services, including WASH, education and protection. The results also indicate that the inadequacy of available assistance is a source of dissatisfaction, both in terms of the number of people reached and the duration of support.
Achievements and innovations
For 2022, the humanitarian community in Burkina Faso has applied a targeting methodology that takes into account the severity of needs and accessibility of services by populations in need of assistance; conducts a geographic analysis to focus on areas in which populations are on the move (displacement) and/or face challenges in accessing basic services and assistance through regular national structures; and considers the humanitarian community’s capacity to respond to these needs.
Through this process, the humanitarian community is enhancing the rigour of our targeting process and thus the credibility of our financing request. Affected populations, national authorities and donors considering the Burkina Faso Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) can have greater confidence that the humanitarian community has the capacity to deliver the support indicated, and that we are not replacing national systems but prioritizing their extension to people most in need. In tandem, the development community in Burkina Faso is developing the new UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework, in collaboration with humanitarian partners, which offers a unique opportunity to bridge from the HRP through the Cooperation Framework to Leave No One Behind and ensure that the triple nexus approach becomes a reality.