Sahel displacement nears 4 million, UNHCR says

Nearly four million people have been forced from their homes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the UN refugee agency said Friday, warning of a deepening displacement crisis in the central Sahel.

UNHCR said the figure includes 818,000 refugees and asylum seekers and is more than double the level recorded six years ago. In 2020, the agency counted more than 1.7 million internally displaced people and 365,000 refugees in the region.

The agency said continued attacks affecting civilians, climate-related shocks and severe humanitarian funding shortages were compounding the crisis. Abdouraouf Gnon-Konde, UNHCR's regional director for west and central Africa, said those pressures were forcing more families to flee, damaging livelihoods and limiting displaced people's ability to rebuild.

In Mali, most refugees come from neighbouring Burkina Faso. UNHCR said Koro, in Mali's central Bandiagara region near the Burkina Faso border, hosted about 86,000 Burkinabe refugees in July, including more than 14,000 children. The agency said the number of refugees there was now nearly equal to the local host community, putting pressure on land, water and health services.

UNHCR also warned that the crisis is spreading beyond the central Sahel, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced to coastal west African countries including Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Togo.

The agency said it faced a severe funding shortfall and estimated in September that it had received only 27 percent of the money needed for its Sahel work.