OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (BN24) — Burkina Faso’s military government expelled the United Nations’ top representative in the country on Monday, August 18, following the release of a UN report that accused both armed groups and government-backed forces of recruiting children amid the ongoing jihadist conflict.
In an official statement, the junta declared UN Resident Humanitarian Coordinator Carol Flore-Smereczniak “persona non grata,” condemning what it described as “baseless” allegations contained in the March report titled Children and Armed Conflict in Burkina Faso. The military regime accused the United Nations of publishing “falsehoods” and criticized the lack of investigative evidence supporting the report’s findings.
The UN document detailed serious violations against minors, including recruitment of child soldiers, killings, rapes, sexual violence, abductions, and targeted attacks on schools and hospitals. While most abuses were linked to jihadist factions such as the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), investigators found that Burkina Faso’s own defense and security forces, alongside their civilian auxiliary group known as the Volunteers for the Defence of the Nation (VDP), accounted for roughly 20 percent of the documented violations.
Among the verified incidents, members of the VDP were accused of abducting 23 children and perpetrating four of 20 confirmed cases of rape.
Flore-Smereczniak, a Mauritian appointed in July 2024, became the second senior UN official to be expelled by the Burkina Faso junta in recent years. Her predecessor, Barbara Manzi, an Italian national, was expelled in December 2022 under similar circumstances.
Burkina Faso has endured over a decade of jihadist insurgencies, with the military junta seizing power in September 2022. Despite promises to restore security, violence has surged, leaving more than 26,000 civilians and soldiers dead since the conflict began, with over half of the fatalities recorded in the last three years.
