Burkina Faso Appeal

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, 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 2014), 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. 24 Given that access for monitors remains a challenge, this information does not represent the full scale of violations against children.

In 2024, UNICEF will continue to support the Government to address the most urgent needs of 3 million people affected by recurrent and protracted humanitarian crises, including 2.5 million children. UNICEF will strengthen the core strategic pillars that have guided its multisectoral programme delivery and will use a humanitarian–development–peace nexus approach, localization strategies and youth empowerment to achieve results.

UNICEF is developing access plans adapted to each intervention area to mitigate constraints linked to poor access to the most insecure communities and to provide appropriate responses, building on the Rapid Response and Community Resilience and Emergency Response Team approaches with other United Nations agencies.

UNICEF will support public health emergency preparedness and response and use community-based approaches to scale up the provision of health care to populations. This includes task shifting to promote and provide health care in hard-to-reach areas; strengthening the capacity of health structures for nutrition surveillance and an integrated nutrition response; and delivering medical/nutritional therapeutic products.

To improve access to quality WASH services, UNICEF will reinforce support to community resilience and sustainability, working with local partners to ensure people's minimum access to services in hard-to-reach communities, while strengthening the capacity of water utility authorities to ensure the delivery of safe drinking water in urban areas.

UNICEF will improve access to education by strengthening the education system and its ability to provide quality instruction, whether through non-formal, remedial, vocational, accelerated and/or formal education, both in-person and via radio. Education programmes include a psychosocial component using the safe schools approach.

UNICEF will support prevention and response to violence against children, including grave child rights violations, gender-based violence and sexual exploitation and abuse. Community-based child protection workers and focal points will be equipped to collect and share data on grave violations. UNICEF will support implementation of the protocol on the transfer and care of children associated with armed forces and armed groups; and defense and security forces will be trained on children’s rights, including on the rights of children associated with armed forces and armed groups. At the community level, mine risk education, awareness raising activities on gender-based violence and sexual exploitation and abuse will be conducted and channels for reporting for survivors of gender-based violence and sexual exploitation and abuse established. Training for social workers on case management and mental health and psychosocial support will help improve children's access to a minimum package of services that includes mental health and psychosocial support through quality case management. UNICEF will strengthen mechanisms to collect and process complaints and provide feedback to meet its commitments to accountability to affected populations.