As of 2023-03. The junta stopped publishing CONASUR's registration data after March 2023, when 2,062,534 internally displaced people were recorded; later totals of about 2.1 million are estimates by humanitarian agencies and the real figure is widely believed to be higher.
Jihadist violence spreading from Mali reached Burkina Faso from 2015 and escalated sharply after 2018, producing what became, in proportion to population, one of the largest internal displacement crises in the world. Human Rights Watch reported that by August 2024 more than 2.3 million people had been forced from their homes, 2.1 million of them inside the country. Both sides have attacked civilians: HRW recorded Islamist armed groups killing 1,004 civilians in 259 attacks between January and August 2024, and the army and the pro-government Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland killing at least 1,000 civilians between January and July 2024, including the summary execution of at least 223 civilians, among them 56 children, at Nondin and Soro in February 2024, and up to 400 civilians during operations in April and May. Islamist groups have besieged dozens of towns, cutting inhabitants off from food and aid; the Norwegian Refugee Council reported 800,000 people under blockade in 2023, half in Djibo. Two military coups in 2022 did not reverse the trend, and the government has restricted humanitarian access and expelled journalists and aid organizations. The same conflict system has displaced hundreds of thousands in western Niger's Tillabéri region.
Jihadist groups affiliated to JNIM and Islamic State in the Sahel, the Burkinabè army and the pro-government Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland have attacked and besieged civilian communities, producing one of the world's largest internal displacement crises
Burkina Faso's fifth general census, held in 2019, counted 20,505,155 residents; the country's population has since grown to roughly 23-24 million.
No cumulative death toll has been established. Human Rights Watch's documented figures for a single eight-month period in 2024 — 1,004 civilians killed by Islamist armed groups and at least 1,000 by the army and pro-government militias — indicate a scale of several thousand civilian deaths per year, but there has been no mortality survey and access restrictions prevent systematic counting.
Documented by Human Rights Watch, which recorded summary executions by the army and the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland and mass attacks by Islamist groups, and by the Norwegian Refugee Council, which documented the blockade of towns cutting inhabitants off from food and aid.
Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana