Humanitarians call it a “neglected” catastrophe.
International News
Jihadist Bloodshed Fills Burkina Displacement Camps
Feebly shaded by trees in the blistering heat, desperate civilians throng a displacement camp in tents and ramshackle shelters after fleeing jihadist violence in northeastern Burkina Faso.
Abandoning their homes and farms as the militants swooped, thousands have run for their lives to these camps near the town of Dori, where little hope awaits them.
“They came to our village and threatened us. They stole our cattle. They killed our people,” said one of the survivors, Kirissi Sawadogo.
“That is why we had to flee and came here,” she said, preparing a meal of millet paste.
From her home village of Lelly in the Sahel desert region, she fled to Wendou 2, an offshoot of a vast initial camp of the same name that is now home to 3,000 people.
Armed jihadists have for almost 10 years been terrorising civilians in this African country on the southern fringe of the Sahel.
The displaced people rarely speak of the groups’ names, but authorities generally identify them as militants linked to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group.
In September 2023, armed men attacked the Wendou camp, killing eight inhabitants.
– ‘Neglected’ displacement crisis –
A new ranking by the non-government Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) published on Monday judged that Burkina Faso is suffering the most neglected displacement crisis for the second year in a row.
A quarter of the estimated two million displaced people in Burkina Faso are from the Sahel region in the north, according to the country’s latest official data, which date from 2023.
At the start of this year, 85 per cent of schools and 69 per cent of the health centres in the Sahel sector were closed, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Visiting the camps in late May, the NRC’s head Jan Egeland said the Sahel “is an area which is systematically overlooked”.
He said the situation had worsened due to a diplomatic crisis between Western donor states and the military leaders who took power in recent years in three countries struggling with jihadists: Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
The Burkinabe authorities frequently claim victories over the jihadists, but no end to the violence is in sight and part of the country is beyond the army’s control.
– Illegal gold-panning –
In the Torodi camp, another desolate displacement centre near Dori, Amadou Dicko said he arrived six months ago with his family.
“We are just here with nothing,” he said. “We have to rely on ourselves to survive.”
Some of the men earn a handful of CFA francs from illegal gold-panning in the surrounding region, despite the danger posed there by the armed groups.
Even the children in the camp “try to bring home something to eat”, said Aissetou Amadou, another inhabitant who arrived six months ago.
She fled her home village near the town of Gorgadji after being threatened by “armed men”.
“Yesterday (the children) managed to bring back two kilos (4.4 pounds) of rice” that they bought in the town, she said, sitting on a mat in a tiny makeshift shelter of wood and tarpaulin.
“We cooked half of it in the evening and the rest this morning,” she said.
She did not know when the family’s next meal would come.
– Food convoys threatened –
The UN World Food Programme flies in some essentials to the displaced here.
But most food, fuel and farming supplies must still go by road, under army escort, through a dangerous stretch of road frequently targeted by jihadists.
Dori, a big town on the highway to the capital Ouagadougou, is a key hub for such supplies.
By the roadside stand dozens of trucks, waiting for permission to leave in a convoy on the perilous route through the Dori district.
“In the past you could load your vehicle at 7:00 pm in the evening in Ouagadougou and by 6:00 am it would be at the store” to unload the delivery, said Amadou Hamidou Dicko, president of the Dori traders’ association.
“Nowadays, you have to wait two weeks, a month or a month and a half,” he added. “It depends, because they never tell you the exact day when the convoy is going to leave.”
– Food prices soar –
The restrictions have driven up the price of trucking and, in turn, the cost of products in the shop.
“Two or three years ago, a 50-kilogram sack of rice sold for 16 or 17,000 CFA (about $28). Now it’s 27,000 CFA,” said Dicko.
Traders sometimes resort to driving by alternative routes without an escort — at risk of having their goods and trucks stolen or destroyed.
Back in the Wendou 2 camp, Kirissi Sawadogo finishes preparing her millet paste. In the evening, she will add a bit of water and salt to it and feed it to her children.
Another refugee in the camp, Hawa Mama, a red scarf covering her head, said she had “no strength left to move”, having also fled her village.
“Even though it is hard here, back there it is worse,” she said, in the Fulfulde language of the Fulani people.
“We have no choice but to stay here. There is nothing left for us back there.”
AFP
The Israeli military announced on Wednesday it had struck two naval cruise missile production facilities operating under Iran’s ministry of defence in Tehran.
“In recent days, the Israeli air force acting on IDF intelligence struck two key naval cruise missile production sites in Tehran,” the military said.
It said the facilities were used to “develop and manufacture long-range naval cruise missiles, which are capable of rapidly destroying targets at sea and on land”.
The strikes “represent another step in deepening the damage done to the regime’s military production infrastructure”, the military added.
Last week, the military announced its fighter jets had struck several Iranian naval ships in the Caspian Sea, including vessels equipped with anti-submarine missiles.
AFP
The number of migrants who died on the “Eastern Route” from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula doubled to a record high of 922 last year, the UN migration agency said Wednesday.
Tens of thousands of migrants from Ethiopia, Somalia and neighbouring countries take the route across the Red Sea each year, mostly from Djibouti to Yemen, in search of work as labourers or domestic workers in wealthy Gulf countries.
“2025 was the deadliest year ever recorded on the Eastern migration route… with 922 people dead or missing — double the number from the previous year,” Tanja Pacifico, head of mission for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Djibouti, told AFP.
The majority of victims were from Ethiopia, the second most-populous country in Africa with more than 130 million people. It is plagued by multiple internal conflicts and deep poverty.
“IOM remains fully committed to working alongside the government of Djibouti to promote safe and dignified migration pathways, in order to prevent further tragedies,” said Pacifico.
Many migrants who cross the Red Sea find themselves stuck in Yemen, the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula, which has been embroiled in a civil war for nearly a decade, and some even choose to return.
Rapid economic growth in Ethiopia — estimated to reach around 10 percent in 2026 — could encourage less migration, IOM says, but that is mitigated by high inflation, also around 10 percent in February.
AFP
Denmark’s political parties began the thorny process of forming a government Wednesday, with the centrist Moderates as kingmaker after the prime minister’s Social Democrats scraped through a general election without a majority.
Danes were braced for a weeks-long process as Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seeks to consolidate power in the deeply splintered parliament after Tuesday’s snap vote.
A left-wing bloc made up of five parties, including Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, won 84 seats; the right-wing and far-right claimed 77; and the Moderates won 14 in the election.
The Social Democrats posted their worst election score since 1903—though they remained Denmark’s largest single party, with 38 seats in the 179-seat parliament.
Frederiksen formally tendered her coalition government’s resignation to King Frederik on Wednesday, telling a televised party leader debate she wanted to try to form a centre-left government.
“The most realistic scenario” would be a coalition with the five parties on the left and the centre-right Moderates, she said.
But it is not certain the Moderates, led by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, would agree to that.
“I don’t believe that Denmark needs policies aligned with” the leftist Red-Green Alliance, Lokke said.
King Frederik was to meet party leaders individually later Wednesday to determine who should be asked to try to form the next government.
“My expectation is that Mette Frederiksen will become prime minister,” University of Copenhagen political science professor Rune Stubager told reporters.
“But I don’t know with the backing of which parties, like the left wing or the right wing,” he said.
He noted that Lokke, a two-time former prime minister, would likely vie for the position of prime minister, even though he has adamantly denied any interest in the job.
“Danes want me and not another prime minister. I still have the backing to be able to continue on behalf of the Danish people,” Frederiksen insisted during the debate.
Frederiksen has for the past four years headed an unprecedented left-right coalition made up of her Social Democrats, the Moderates and the Liberals.
The Liberals have refused to continue in a Social Democrat-led government.
‘Too Hard To Say’
Danes are now prepared for long negotiations. After the 2022 election, the talks lasted six weeks.
“It’s a long process, which means the government won’t be formed and it will be quite difficult to pass laws during this period,” lamented Jesper Dyrfjeld Christensen, a 54-year-old engineer.
“It’s really too hard to say who will be part of the coalition,” admitted Stubager.
With 12 parties in parliament, the political landscape is jagged — though Denmark is accustomed to minority governments.
“To some extent, this is the way Danish politics works. You have a minority government in the centre which forms a majority with the left on some issues and with the right on others,” he explained.
The negotiations are expected to focus on economic and pension issues, pollution and immigration, he said.
The traditional far-right party, the Danish People’s Party, which has heavily influenced policy since the late 1990s but slumped in the 2022 election, more than tripled its result to 9.1 per cent of votes.
The three anti-immigration groups together garnered 17 per cent, a stable figure for Denmark’s populist right over the past two decades.
“If negotiations take place in the left-wing bloc with the moderates, then there will be more focus on green issues than on immigration,” Stubager said.
“But if, instead, the Moderates negotiate with the parties on the right, then the central issue will be immigration.”
Four seats in Denmark’s parliament are held by its two autonomous territories — two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands.
While the Faroese renewed the mandates of the two outgoing lawmakers, with one for each bloc, Greenland overwhelmingly backed the left-wing party and Naleraq, which advocates rapid independence from Denmark.
AFP
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