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Add to Preferred SourcesThe UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, wrapped up in Burkina Faso a three-nation visit to the Sahel region and expressed his alarm about the rapidly deteriorating situation across the region, where escalating insecurity has forced a rising number of people to flee their homes.
“The emergency is here, in the Sahel, where people are suffering, are being killed, women are being raped, children cannot go to school,” said Grandi. “Sahel is the place where we must intervene before this crisis becomes unmanageable.”
Meeting with the Presidents of Burkina Faso and Niger, along with the Government of Mauritania, the High Commissioner praised these countries for continuing to welcome refugees while themselves facing humanitarian emergencies such as in Niger and Burkina Faso.
“In the Sahel, some of the poorest countries in the world remain some of the most generous,” said Filippo Grandi, acknowledging the solidarity that Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso extend to some 165,000 refugees fleeing Mali, where the security situation does not show signs of improvement.
The number of IDPs in Burkina Faso has risen ten-fold in 2019 alone, reaching a total of 560,000. Another 70,000 people were displaced in neighbouring Mali during the same year, pushing the country’s displaced population over the 200,000 mark. In total, the Central Sahel region currently shelters over a million refugees and IDPs.
Indiscriminate attacks by armed and terror groups on state institutions and security services, on schools and health facilities are recorded with shocking frequency across the entire region. These aggravate existing social tensions and widespread poverty, as local communities are often the first responders.
Rampant insecurity is having an adverse impact on the humanitarian response as it severely hinders access by humanitarian actors to reach people in need – those forced to flee and the communities hosting them all desperately need shelter, food, water, protection, health, education.
“In the Sahel, the response to the crisis must not be a security one alone. The protection of those forced to flee must remain at the core of our response to this displacement crisis,” said Grandi.
This includes a better coordination between civilian and military authorities to ensure humanitarian access for immediate assistance. It is also critical to create the conditions for humanitarian and development actors to help with solutions to the affected population.
In a displacement crisis of this scale, UNHCR reiterates its call for protection of those fleeing violence. The governments of the Sahel reaffirmed their commitments to protect civilians in a context of counterterrorism operations in the Sahel. They also reaffirmed the needs for greater access of displaced persons to civil status documents, identity documents and nationality to access education, jobs, housing or healthcare and prevent statelessness.
“Peace, security and development are key to the coexistence between those forced to flee and the communities hosting them,” said Grandi. “By supporting the Governments in bringing refugees and their host communities together, humanitarian and development actors must work toward ensuring access to education, health and economic opportunities,” he added. “Addressing the root causes of this crisis will enable to find lasting solutions. This also means addressing the key impact of climate change as well as the impact of these displacements on the nature”.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, leads international response to protect those forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution.
Original source: UNHCR
Published on 04 February 2020