Burkina Faso: World’s Most Neglected Crisis for Second Year

Burkina Faso has been designated the world’s most ignored displacement crisis by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) for the second consecutive year. The West African nation saw a record-high 707,000 new displacements in 2023 due to increasing violence and a deepening humanitarian emergency.

Nine of the top 10 most disregarded crises occurred in Africa, with Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mali, and Niger occupying the second to fifth places. The NRC’s metrics for overlooked displacement crises encompass insufficiency in humanitarian funding, lack of media coverage, and absence of international political and diplomatic efforts.

The study also disclosed an all-time high deficit in aid budgets of about $32 billion, leading to over half of global humanitarian necessities going unaddressed. Coverage of Burkina Faso’s displacement crisis in the media and international political involvement in the crisis were deemed “minimal” in 2023, with only 37% of requested humanitarian aid received by the country.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) persisted as one of the most disregarded crises for the eighth consecutive year, with roughly 6.9 million individuals displaced by the conclusion of 2023. The NRC urged contributors and humanitarians to prioritize overlooked regions to prevent them from fading from memory.