Burkina Faso’s military government has declared the United Nations’ top humanitarian official in the country, Carol Flore-Smereczniak, persona non grata and ordered her expulsion, citing her involvement in a UN report alleging the use of child soldiers in the country’s ongoing conflict.
The decision follows the publication of a March report titled “Children and Armed Conflict in Burkina Faso”, which documented serious violations against minors, including child recruitment, sexual violence, and attacks on schools and hospitals. The report attributed most of the abuses to jihadist armed groups, primarily the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS).
However, the report also implicated Burkina Faso’s national security forces and their allied civilian militias — known as the Volunteers for the Defence of the Nation (VDN) — in roughly 20% of the documented violations. According to investigators, VDN members were responsible for at least 23 child abductions and several instances of sexual violence.
In response, the junta condemned the findings as “baseless” and accused the UN of spreading “falsehoods” without adequate supporting evidence. “This report... contains no appendices with copies of investigation reports or court rulings,” the government said in a statement, defending its security forces as “valiant fighters.”
Flore-Smereczniak, a Mauritian diplomat appointed in July 2024, is the second UN coordinator expelled from Burkina Faso in recent years. Her predecessor, Italian official Barbara Manzi, was also declared persona non grata in 2022 under similar circumstances.
Since seizing power in a 2022 coup, the Burkinabe junta has taken a confrontational stance toward international organizations and NGOs, amid a worsening jihadist insurgency that has gripped the Sahel nation for over a decade. More than 26,000 people have died in the conflict — over half of them in just the past three years — with both jihadist groups and state forces accused of widespread human rights violations.
Despite pledges to restore security, the junta continues to face mounting criticism over its handling of the conflict and its deteriorating relationship with international partners.
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