WHO: Ursula Mueller, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator

WHAT: Special visit to Burkina Faso

WHEN: 2 – 5 March 2019

WHERE: Ouagadougou and Centre-Nord region, Burkina Faso

UN Assistant-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Ursula Mueller, will visit Ouagadougou and displacement sites in the Centre-Nord region from 2 to 5 March 2019. ASG/DERC Mueller is expected to meet with Burkina Faso’s President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré and other officials, local authorities in conflict-affected areas, displaced people, UN agencies, as well as international and local NGOs.

Burkina Faso is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis where armed violence and insecurity have caused population displacement in Nord, Centre-Nord and Sahel regions and exacerbated adversity among some of the country’s most vulnerable communities.

Conflict and intercommunity clashes have uprooted over 100,000 people from their homes, more than half of them in the first two months of 2019. Some 120,000 people have no access to medical care and 150,000 children are deprived of education with over 1,100 school forced to close in the violence-affected regions. In addition, around 676,000 people are at risk of food insecurity, and 130,000 children are threatened by severe acute malnutrition this year.

The Government and the humanitarian community have responded immediately to the sudden deterioration of the situation. They are working together to bring response to scale, launched an emergency response plan in February, appealing for US$100 million to assist some 900,000 people hardest-hit by the crisis. Resources and unfettered access for humanitarian actors to the most vulnerable people remain the main challenges and will be essential to provide urgent lifesaving assistance in conflict-affected areas.