Dakar/Ouagagoudou — "We have an acute humanitarian crisis, but a government that alienates aid workers."
Burkina Faso's ruling junta is tightening its grip on humanitarian relief organisations, obstructing their efforts amid a broader push to assert political sovereignty and limit scrutiny of its campaign against jihadist groups, aid workers say.
At a glance: Arrests, suspensions, and the new rules squeezing aid
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- Arrests of aid workers have increased, especially targeting those negotiating access or researching security conditions.
- New laws are raising risks for Burkinabè staff and giving the government greater control over relief operations.
- The junta is issuing displacement and returns data that aid workers say are politicised and unreliable.
- Relief groups remained blocked from accessing areas controlled by jihadist groups, undermining their impartiality and ability to meet the most critical needs.
- Aid workers say senior humanitarian leadership in the country has failed to push back against the junta's restrictions.
Since taking power in 2022, the administration of Ibrahim Traoré has restricted relief groups from accessing areas of the country controlled by jihadists, while saddling them with a thicket of rules and regulations, and disciplining those who speak out.
Half a dozen aid workers and internal documents reviewed by The New Humanitarian show these pressures have intensified over the past year, causing organisations to self-censor, and some to question whether to continue operating.
"We have an acute humanitarian crisis, but a government that alienates aid workers and which does not respect international humanitarian law," said a Burkinabè aid worker based in an eastern part of the country for a national NGO.
The aid worker said they are worried that under the current conditions "the major NGOs will all withdraw and leave the country". Like all sources quoted in this story, they requested anonymity because of the high risk of reprisals.
While funding cuts from Western donors and security threats posed by jihadists were cited as major challenges by aid workers, interviewees all said the government's increasingly hostile stance towards them now weighs most heavily on their work.
Most pointed to increased arrests of aid workers in recent months - targeting both national and international staff - as a critical area of concern, as well new policies introduced in 2025 that further restrict their ability to operate effectively.
Rather than pushing back, several aid workers complained that senior humanitarian leadership -- particularly within the UN -- has opted to fall in line with the authorities, even helping them reinforce official narratives that the conflict is getting better.
They pointed, for example, to the UN-coordinated humanitarian response plan for 2026, which includes government data showing a massive increase in displaced people returning home -- figures many say are neither impartial nor credible.
While the humanitarian situation was dire well before the junta seized power, it is widely seen to have worsened, driven by intensified military operations and the mass conscription of civilians into pro-government volunteer forces.
The army and its auxiliaries are regularly accused of carrying out mass atrocities against civilians, while jihadist groups have responded to the junta's "total war" strategy by blockading dozens of towns across the country.
"We live in fear and just pretend to survive," said a woman from the eastern town of Kantchari, which has been under blockade for several years. "You ask yourself every day whether you'll still be alive tomorrow."
The New Humanitarian sent emailed questions to the UN's top official in Burkina Faso, Maurice Azonnankpo - asking what the UN has done to challenge the junta's policies against aid groups - but received no response.
Requests for comment to Burkina Faso's prime minister and the office of the president - on restrictions to humanitarian access, the legal basis for detaining aid workers, and calculations on internal displacement - also went unanswered.
Access restrictions
Burkina Faso has faced jihadist insurgencies for over a decade. The violence fuelled back-to-back coups, and - as in neighbouring Mali and Niger - triggered a sharp pivot away from Western states that were previously providing security support.
Traoré has won local acclaim for his outspoken criticism of imperialism, and for his push for Burkina Faso to be more self-reliant through better control over national resources and by initiating various state-led development projects.
But aid groups, long criticised for reproducing colonial power dynamics, have been caught up in this sovereigntist push, viewed with suspicion for portraying the country negatively and for their funding links to Western states that are seen as having undermined Burkina Faso's post-colonial development.
Interviewees said their movements have been heavily restricted for a long time, with no access given to areas controlled by jihadist fighters. Populations who live there are "labelled as being on the side of armed groups", said one aid worker.
While reaching besieged communities is sometimes possible, aid workers said they rely on costly humanitarian flights or military-escorted convoys that can take the junta many months to organise, leaving populations waiting long periods for assistance.
In Kantchari, the local aid worker said "almost all our elderly have died" because of hunger while others suffer from malnutrition. "I [recently] had my uncle on the phone and he told me that for two days, he had only been drinking water and salt," they said.
Aid workers said that by following government orders on where they can operate, they are often seen by people in conflict areas as being aligned with the state. They said jihadist groups also often see them in the same light.
"NGOs present themselves as auxiliaries of the government - the problem is that the other side of the conflict is starting to blame them for it," said an aid worker for an international organisation.
A man displaced from Kantchari said jihadists can also exploit the lack of aid. "In some villages, they leave bags of rice and oil at families' doors," he said. "They try to show their 'humanitarian' side. They tell the population they are the saviours, not the state."
The threat of arrest
While aid workers are seen as too close to the junta, the same authorities have detained over 70 of them - the vast majority Burkinabè - since 2022, according to a relief worker who is closely monitoring constraints on the sector.
The relief worker and several other aid workers said there has been a recent upswing in arrests, especially targeting those responsible for negotiating access to conflict areas - which might require dialogue with jihadists - or researching security conditions.
One aid worker for an international NGO said several of their colleagues were arrested and accused of "terrorist collaboration", while another said they were aware of individuals who died in custody. The New Humanitarian could not independently verify these statements.
In one high-profile case last year, authorities detained several staff members from the International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO), which analyses security information to help relief groups operate safely.
Aid workers said the arrests created a chilling effect across the humanitarian community, underscoring the intense political pressure that had been building against them.
"They struck the right target by going after INSO. It sent a very strong message: Say nothing anymore," said the aid worker who has been monitoring constraints in the sector. "At the moment, there is such a high level of self-censorship among NGOs."
Some aid workers fear that new policies introduced last year have increased the risks facing humanitarian staff - particularly Burkinabè, who make up the vast majority of the workforce of both national and international organisations.
One policy requires Burkinabè to be appointed to key leadership and financial positions within humanitarian organisations, which leaves those individuals more responsible for their group's actions.
The measure coincides with an expansion of the junta's powers to revoke citizenship from Burkinabè deemed to be acting against the interests of the state, and the reintroduction of the death penalty.
And even before these changes, authorities were detaining civil society activists and journalists, in some cases forcibly conscripting them to the front lines -- a record that aid workers say underscores the dangers now facing national staff.
"Imagine having a Burkinabè country director for an international NGO and you have this person needing to align with whatever [the authorities] are telling them to do otherwise they can take their citizenship," said one aid worker.
"For local staff, the risk is very high," said a second official. "They can be accused of collecting information for foreign entities against the government, or of collusion with foreign agents to destabilise the country."
Suspensions and other impediments
Alongside the arrests, authorities have expelled aid workers, including the UN's top official, Carol Flore-Smereczniak. She was forced to leave last August after the UN published a report documenting violations against children, including by state forces.
Entire organisations have also been suspended, including INSO, which aid groups described as a "beacon" that provided up-to-date contextual and security analysis in a deeply complicated operating environment.
Other organisations have been suspended for what authorities said was a failure to sign registration documents or simply for being seen as portraying the government badly.
A few months ago, an international NGO was suspended after using the term "military junta" instead of transitional government in a public communication, according to two aid workers familiar with the case.
Last year, the foreign ministry instructed organisations to stop using the term "non-state armed group" and instead label jihadist groups as "terrorists". It also told them to avoid describing pro-government volunteer forces as "militias".
While jihadist groups are linked to transnational organisations - including al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State - many fighters have been drawn in by local grievances that "war on terror" rhetoric has failed to address.
Pro-government volunteer forces, meanwhile, have been implicated in many abuses and have used their position as state auxiliaries to settle local scores, underlining how dynamics on the ground are more complicated than official narratives.
A growing web of administrative and bureaucratic obstacles have also further slowed and constrained humanitarian operations, according to the aid workers who spoke to The New Humanitarian.
Some said the approval of agreements for NGOs to operate now takes an extremely long time, while others mentioned lengthy background checks being required for the heads of organisations.
Concerns were raised about a new requirement for NGOs to deposit funds in a state-run treasury bank. It is feared the bank's limited geographic reach could delay payments to staff and suppliers - and remove all privacy from expenditures.
Others described the burden of having to request multiple authorisations from various ministries to carry out humanitarian activities, and even to collect data to better understand local needs and plan responses.
In recent months, for example, authorities have more systematically required organisations to obtain a "statistical visa" to collect data. One aid worker described the process as lengthy, resource-intensive, and akin to "a PhD defense".
"All of this takes an enormous amount of time and money," said the aid worker. "This is completely disconnected from the humanitarian system, which is about saving lives and having simple data to deliver a response."
"Far-fetched" data
For vital data on internal displacement, aid groups rely on figures recorded by the government - but these are rarely updated and many feel they are politicised to make the situation seem better than it actually is.
Government figures currently claim that over a million internally displaced people - out of two million in total - have returned to their areas of origin as of July 2025, but aid workers said they have not been given the locations of those returns.
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One described the figure as "far-fetched", while another said publishing accurate displacement data "would mean admitting that the fight against terrorism is failing".
Despite this scepticism, the returnee figure appears to feature in the UN-coordinated 2026 humanitarian response plan for Burkina Faso - a move that several sources said reflects political pressure and the need to secure government endorsement.
Aid workers warned that supporting returnee communities carries significant risks, as humanitarian organisations often cannot verify whether returns have taken place in a voluntary and informed way.
In many cases, they said, the government frames return as a patriotic duty and promises protection through volunteer militias -- forces that have been accused of abuses and whose presence can draw attacks from jihadists.
While the government says displacement has fallen, aid workers and half a dozen residents living in conflict areas also alleged that some people are being forced not to leave their home areas because the junta wants to present them as stable.
One aid worker described the situation as amounting to "a double blockade". "On one side, you have the armed groups, and on the other, the government is blocking you because they want to show an image that isn't true," they said.
Others described not being able to leave villages outside government control and head to provincial capitals because they are viewed suspiciously by military personnel.
"They say they are either accomplices of terrorist groups or terrorists themselves," said a man from an eastern region, describing a de facto blockade on entering the city of Fada N'Gourma. "When people are unable to justify themselves, they are usually turned back."
Red lines
Despite the mounting pressures, aid workers told The New Humanitarian that there is no unified position among humanitarian agencies to engage the government or negotiate more effectively.
Humanitarian diplomacy is often done by donors, but many of these donors were Western and disengaged as Burkina Faso aligned itself against them.
With donor deprioritisation and US funding cuts, the country received the lowest level of humanitarian funding last year since 2020, securing only around 30% of the nearly $800 million requested.
Looking ahead, most aid workers described a sector caught between resignation and determination -- frustrated at the lack of impact it is able to have, yet for the most part still unwilling to walk away.
"For now, no NGOs are withdrawing or planning to withdraw," said one senior aid worker. "On the contrary, organisations are committed to staying - but only within the limits of our principles or red lines."
Still, they accepted that those red lines -- meant to define what their organisations will and won't accept in order to preserve their humanitarian principles -- are "becoming more and more pink" with each passing day.
Edited by Andrew Gully.
