Burkina Faso Issues - 2023

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES 

Disputes - international

adding to illicit cross-border activities, Burkina Faso has issues concerning unresolved boundary alignments with its neighbors; demarcation is currently underway with Mali; the dispute with Niger was referred to the ICJ in 2010, and a dispute over several villages with Benin persists; Benin retains a border dispute with Burkina Faso around the town of Koualau/Kourou

Refugees and internally displaced persons

refugees (country of origin): 35,860 (Mali) (2023)

IDPs:

1,761,915 (2022)

Trafficking in persons

tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List — Burkina Faso does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so; the government has established child protection units throughout the country, identifying potential victims, and continued working with teachers to prevent forced child begging; officials collaborated with international organizations and foreign donors to implement a humanitarian response plan to assist vulnerable people in conflict-affected areas, including potential trafficking victims; however, the government did not demonstrate overall increasing efforts compared to the previous year to improve its anti-trafficking capacity; substantial personnel turnover, related to the January 2022 coup d’état and formation of a transition government, hindered Burkina Faso’s ability to maintain consistent anti-trafficking efforts; officials did not report any prosecutions or convictions for the third consecutive year nor effectively screen vulnerable populations; the national anti-trafficking committee did not meet or coordinate anti-trafficking activities; the government did not adequately address complicity in trafficking crimes, including allegations of local officials exploiting internally displaced persons (IDPs) in sex trafficking; therefore, Burkina Faso remained on Tier 2 Watch List for the second consecutive year (2022)

trafficking profile: human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Burkina Faso, and traffickers exploit victims from Burkina Faso abroad; traffickers fraudulently recruit Burkinabe children under the pretext of educational opportunities and exploit them as farm hands, laborers in artisanal mines, street vendors, and domestic servants; some parents knowingly allow their children to be exploited in domestic servitude to supplement family income; girls are exploited in sex trafficking in Ouagadougou and mining towns; some Quranic teachers force students to beg, sometimes with their parents’ knowledge; traffickers transport Burkinabe children—including homeless children—to Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, and Niger for forced labor in artisanal mining, forced begging, cocoa production, and sex trafficking; traffickers recruit women with fraudulent employment offers to work in Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and—to a lesser extent—Europe then exploit them in sex trafficking or domestic servitude; more than 1.4 million IDPs are vulnerable to forced labor and sex trafficking; violent extremist groups exploit women and children in forced labor and sex trafficking, recruit and use child soldiers, and reportedly coerce victims to carry out attacks or act as accomplices; traffickers exploit children from neighboring countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria, in forced labor and sex trafficking; women from other West African countries are falsely recruited for employment in Burkina Faso and then exploited in forced labor in restaurants or domestic service; Nigerian women and girls are recruited for work in shops and salons and instead exploited in sex trafficking in mining regions; Cubans, including medical professionals, working in Burkina Faso may have been forced to work by the Cuban government; Burkina Faso is a transit country for traffickers moving children from Mali to Cote d’Ivoire and women and girls from Cote d’Ivoire to Saudi Arabia, as well as Ghanaian migrants traveling to Libya and Italy, some of whom are trafficking victims (2022)

NOTE: The information regarding Burkina Faso on this page is re-published from the 2023 World Fact Book of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and other sources. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Burkina Faso 2023 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Burkina Faso 2023 should be addressed to the CIA or the source cited on each page.