Ten million children in central Sahel at risk of insecurity, says UNICEF

According to a UNICEF report released on Friday, March 17, ten million children living in the central Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) are threatened by insecurity due to the intensification of conflicts. They therefore urgently need humanitarian aid. The report also indicates that as hostilities between armed groups and national security forces spread across borders, nearly 4 million children are at risk in neighboring countries.

“Armed conflict is increasingly affecting children, who are victims of intensified military confrontations or targeted by non-state armed groups,” says Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF Regional Director for the for West and Central Africa.

Thus, “the year 2022 has been particularly violent for children in the central Sahel. All parties to the conflict must urgently stop the attacks against them, but also against their schools, health centers and homes,” the same source added.

Armed groups opposed to the state-run education system systematically burn and loot schools, as well as threaten, abduct, or execute teachers.

More than 8,300 schools have closed in the three countries, either because they have been directly targeted and teachers have fled, or because parents have been displaced or are afraid to send their children there. More than one in five schools has closed in Burkina Faso and 30 percent of schools in the Tillabéri region of Niger are no longer functioning due to conflict.

The situation is not at its best either in neighboring countries

Hostilities extend beyond the central Sahel to border areas in northern Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo, where isolated communities lack infrastructure and resources, and where children’s access to essential services and protection is very limited.

At least 172 violent incidents, including attacks by armed groups, were reported in this area in 2022. In Benin, the hardest hit country, 16% of the population is considered at risk, according to a regional monitoring network. By the end of 2022, nine schools in the northern regions of Benin and Togo had closed or ceased operation due to insecurity.

According to recent projections by the UN, more than 20,000 people living in the border area between these three countries will reach a level of food insecurity described as “catastrophic” by June 2023.