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Simon Nacoulma, aid worker: ‘They don’t understand what’s happening to their country’ “Physical and verbal aggression and stigmatisation sews germs of civil war,” Zougmoré said. He’s also hatching a plan to prevent the stigmatisation of ethnic groups such as Fulani herders – accused of joining and harbouring extremists – and promote peaceful coexistence between communities. Zougmoré thinks rights organisations in Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries affected by extremism should come together to create the civil society equivalent of the G5 Sahel – a regional military force created to combat extremists.
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After Zougmoré’s organisation published a report last year denouncing extrajudicial killings by the military, it was threatened by government supporters on social media.
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Insecurity is also impacting a once thriving civic space. Read more → How jihadists are fuelling inter-communal conflict in Burkina Faso “The situation is concerning and alarming, and the consequence is that soldiers and civilians are being killed and there are many internally displaced people living in very hard situations,” he said.
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But the constant flow of civilian killings in recent months – by jihadists, local self-defence groups, and the government’s own security forces – is worse than anything he’s seen before. Chrysogone Zougmoré, civil society: ‘Stigmatisation sews germs of civil war’Ĭhrysogone Zougmoré, president of the Burkinabé Movement for Human Rights, has worked for rights organisations for more than 30 years, and seen his fair share of abuses, particularly under Compaoré. Here, we share the views of six lesser-heard Burkinabé voices – a civil society leader, an aid worker, an imam, a teacher, a journalist, and a researcher. The numbers only tell part of the story of a conflict that has touched all aspects of life. The New Humanitarian has been on the ground covering the latest violence. With nearly 840,000 people now internally displaced, according to the UN, and more than two million in need of aid, things are going from bad to worse. Out of the world’s 15 deadliest conflicts tracked last year by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), Burkina Faso was the country that worsened the most. The country’s long history of religious tolerance and social harmony – in a region troubled by conflict – made it a fitting name, even after the death of Sankara in a 1987 putsch led by his close aide, Blaise Compaoré.īut in recent years the land of honest men has found itself facing an existential threat: spreading violence by Islamist militants and a patchwork of other militia groups that is destroying the social fabric and turning communities against each other. In 1984, a year after taking charge of the former French colony known as Upper Volta, the late revolutionary Thomas Sankara renamed the country Burkina Faso – the land of upright and honest men in local parlance.