Burkina Faso’s government has effectively banned local and foreign journalists from visiting official sites hosting people displaced by the country’s long-running conflict, Al Jazeera can reveal. It is understood a May 2020 report by Oxfam focusing on the plight of female IDPs and their vulnerability to sexual abuse may also have played a part in the government’s decision to ban journalists, according to a senior humanitarian source. Burkina Faso has been gripped by a security crisis that has spread across the western portion of the Sahel region in recent years, killing thousands of people and leaving some 3.5 million in need of humanitarian aid. There are more than 1.2 million IDPs – about one in 20 people in the country – spread across 269 official IDP sites, according to recent figures from the Burkinabe government. Last year, the United Nations said Burkina Faso’s displacement crisis was the fastest-growing in the world.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA