Burkina Faso
Newsline
Aid urgently needed for those displaced by severe flooding in West Africa
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 8 September 2009 – Burkina Faso and its capital city, Ouagadougou, were among the regions most affected by severe flooding that raged across West Africa early this week.
Retraining helps children secure safer future outside of the mines in Burkina Faso
GANGAOL, Burkina Faso, 8 June 2009 - Gangaol village is located between the Sahel Region and the Centre-North of Burkina Faso. This is a hot and scrubby land, bordering the desert, where increasingly marginal land is being used to farm millet and sorghum - the only crops that can grow here. The region has been struck by frequent droughts and locust swarms, which resulted in famine in 1973, 1984 and 2005.
National campaign accelerates birth registration in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 13 May 2009 – In Burkina Faso, as in many developing countries, millions of children are still making their way through life impoverished, abandoned, malnourished and uneducated. Having gone unregistered since birth, they are in danger of being forgotten and denied access to essential social services.
Polio immunization campaign targets every child in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 15 April 2009 – Too young to understand the importance of receiving her oral polio vaccination, three-year-old Mouniratou Ouzeita needed some encouragement before she allowed the immunization worker to administer the life-saving drops. But after it was all over, she happily accepted a round of applause.
Schoolchildren adopt improved sanitation and hygiene practices in Burkina Faso
WEOTENGA, Burkina Faso, 22 January 2009 – For the students at the Weotenga Primary School in central Burkina Faso, handwashing with soap is anything but a chore. In fact, it’s the latest craze, thanks to efforts by UNICEF to elevate the importance of personal hygiene in the region.
Scaling up HIV/AIDS treatment for children and mothers in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 6 January 2009 – Until he started receiving life saving antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, 12-year-old Pascal was often too sick to get out of bed. Today he is like any other child, laughing and playing with his younger brother, Bernard.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visits school in Burkina Faso
OUGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 7 May 2008 – “When I was a child I studied in more difficult conditions than those I can see today. In my country, schools were seriously damaged as a result of the war. Therefore I schooled under the trees trying to be sheltered from the rain. The UN and UNICEF in particular greatly supported my country at that time.”
Women working for themselves and their community in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 9 April 2008 – A women's association in Burkina Faso is helping single mothers and widows to reclaim their independence through various types of employment.
Kiemde’s story: Combating HIV/AIDS through peer-to-peer education
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 1 April 2008 – Approximately 120,000 children in Burkina Faso have lost a parent to HIV/AIDS. Among them, is Kiemde, 12, who lost his father two years ago. Now, he dedicates every weekend to teaching his classmates and friends how to protect themselves against the virus that took his father’s life.
Peer education raises youth AIDS awareness in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 1 November 2007 – Every weekend, Oumou, 13, leads a peer discussion group to raise youth awareness about HIV/AIDS – including its consequences and how to prevent them – as part of a peer-education programme here.
Support still needed two months after the disastrous floods in Karangasso Sambla
KARANGASSO-SAMBLA, Burkina Faso, 15 October 2007 – All that is left of 14-year-old Jeanne Dye’s family’s home is a heap of stones. One month after the torrential rains which caused disastrous flooding in Karangasso-Sambla, Jeanne vividly remembers the night her whole life turned upside down.
In West Africa flood response, UNICEF focuses on the most vulnerable children
NEW YORK, 25 September 2007 – Four weeks of heavy flooding have taken a damaging toll on countries in West and Central Africa, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced, several hundred killed, and homes and farmland swept away.
Clubs help girls stay in school and succeed in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 13 July 2007 – Alice is in a good mood because she has received a high grade in French class. “It is very important to learn in order to understand what surrounds us,” she tells her friends during a break between classes.
Ensuring a brighter future for child detainees in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 6 July 2007 - Staring into the air as if he were trying to forget about his misfortune, Tapsoba, 17, sits in the Ouagadougou Rehabilitation Prison (MACO) in Burkina Faso. He has been in jail for almost eight months now, after being sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for an attempted break-in.
Burkinabe communities struggle to support early childhood education centres
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 26 June 2007 – It is school time in the Ouagadougou suburbs. Little children sitting in a ‘bisongo’ – a community-based learning centre supported by UNICEF and Catholic Relief Services, a US-based non-governmental organization – are writing numbers on their individual slates.
At Burkinabe festival, youth jury gives UNICEF award to child rights film
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkino Faso, 12 March 2007 – At an awards ceremony held here earlier this month, during FESPACO, Africa’s largest film festival, UNICEF honoured ‘Un matin bonne heure’ (Early One Morning) with a prize for the promotion of child rights. Guinean director Gahité Fofana received the UNICEF trophy and 2 million CFA francs.
First-ever woman chief appointed in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 8 March 2007 – The Naaba Saaga, traditional chief of Issouka, Burkina Faso, sat under a canopy, holding his cane of office and wearing the red ‘bonnet’ that symbolizes his chiefdom. He was dressed in elaborate ceremonial robes, the same as the ones worn before him by his father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
Burkina Faso training centre helps protect young women from exploitation
TOUGAN, Burkina Faso, 16 February 2007 – Seated on an old-fashioned bamboo chair with her eyes downcast, Djerma Salimata, 20, does not seem eager to think back to the time when she worked as house help in Bobo Dioulasso, the second largest city in Burkina Faso.
Nutrition education for mothers promotes child health in Burkina Faso
KOUDOUBMO, Burkina Faso, 21 September 2006 – In this village located in a remote area of Gourcy, Burkina Faso – one of the world’s least developed nations – a recently established nutrition rehabilitation centre is providing life-saving services to moderately undernourished children and their mothers.
Child returnees from Côte d’Ivoire go back to school in Burkina Faso
BOBO DIOULASSO, Burkina Faso, 22 August 2006 – Ousmane Nyenyi, 14, has never gone to school. Like many of their neighbors from the Serfalao commune in Bobo Dioulasso, western Burkina Faso, he and his family had to flee from their adopted country, Côte d’Ivoire, when war broke out there four years ago.
In Burkina Faso, breastfeeding programme works to lower infant mortality
KOUPELA, Burkina Faso, 4 August 2006 – In the heat of the midday sun on a busy village street, a young mother breastfeeds her three-month-old son. She knows it is the optimal source of nutrition for the child.
Regional Director visits community-based child nutrition centres in Burkina Faso
NEW YORK, USA, 3 August 2006 – UNICEF’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Esther Guluma, is in Burkina Faso to witness firsthand community-based efforts to tackle child malnutrition.
For parents and children in western Burkina Faso, school enrolment is a challenge
BOBO DIOULASSO, Burkina Faso, 22 June 2006 – Attending school is a challenge for many children in western Burkina Faso. Parents cannot afford the costly fees to enrol their children in private schools. As a result, the affordable, state-owned schools are suffering from severe overcrowding.
At a children’s festival in Burkina Faso, a ‘heartfelt cry’ to fight AIDS
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 28 April 2006 – The First Lady of Burkina Faso, Chantal Compaoré, joined over 130 boys and girls here for the ‘Deni Show’, a yearly cultural festival celebrating children’s rights.
Danny Glover visits children with HIV in Burkina Faso
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, 2 March 2005 - Renowned actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Danny Glover is in Burkina Faso, serving as an official guest and jury member of the nineteenth Pan African Festival of Cinema and Television. The festival runs from 26 February to 5 March 2005 in Ouagadougou, where Glover visited the Notre Dame of Fatima hospitality centre of Saint Camille de Lellis, which cares for children with HIV.
UNICEF launches new report for meeting of ‘La Francophonie’
OUAGADOUGOU/NEW YORK, 24 November 2004 – Representatives from over 50 member and observer states of International Organization of La Francophonie (IOF), a group of countries in which French is widely spoken – are meeting this week in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso to improve collaboration on development planning and financing.
