National healthcare systems rarely prioritize sexual and reproductive health (SRH). This is a challenge for women and girls worldwide, including in Mali. For women and girls who have been forcibly displaced by conflict and instability, the challenges are particularly pressing.

In December 2020, presidential elections in the Central African Republic (CAR) were marked by a major surge in violence, catapulting the country into a new crisis and humanitarian emergency. Since then, more than 200,000 Central Africans have been forced to flee their homes. Before the recent wave of violence, more than half of CAR’s 4.9 million citizens already required humanitarian assistance. Now, that number continues to rise as supply chains are cut off and the movement of humanitarian relief is limited by the fighting. Read more for critical steps forward.

International donors must take meaningful steps to address the Sahel’s worsening humanitarian crises, and address critical requirements in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Alexandra Lamarche makes the case for increased engagement amid mounting need.

Alors que la COVID‑19 se répand dans la région africaine du Sahel, les menaces qui pèsent sur les populations les plus vulnérables se multiplient. Les sécheresses, la pénurie de ressources et les conflits violents causent des ravages dans les communautés depuis des années. Aujourd’hui, alors que les gouvernements sahéliens du Burkina Faso, du Mali et du Niger s’efforcent de mettre en place des mesures de confinement du virus, certaines politiques menacent, de façon non intentionnelle, la sécurité alimentaire de millions de personnes.

As the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger undertake efforts to combat the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus in the Sahel, an unintended consequence has emerged: worsening food insecurity in a region already reeling from immense resource scarcity, violence, and humanitarian need.

A man poses in the camp for internal displaced people in Bamako on April 2, 2020. - Since June 2018, more than 1200 displaced people who fled their villages in central Mali, have found a shelter in a camp built in proximity of a landfill. The critical hygienic conditions do not allow, among other things, social distancing and the observance of preventive measures for Covid-19 coronavirus. So far 41 cases of Covid-19 coronavirus have been reported in Mali. The rise of COVID-19 coronavirus in the war-torn Sahel has sparked sharp fears for the region's hundreds of thousands of displaced people, often packed inside camps. (Photo by MICHELE CATTANI / AFP) (Photo by MICHELE CATTANI/AFP via Getty Images)

The world’s more than 70 million forcibly displaced people—including refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs, and other forced migrants—are among the most vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.

Le Burkina Faso est le nouveau front du vaste conflit qui règne au Sahel. Les groupes armés, dont certains proviennent de l’extérieur du pays, causent des ravages et occasionnent au Burkina Faso une crise de déplacements de populations parmi les plus rapides au monde. Au cours de la dernière année, les combats ont forcé plus d’un demi-million de personnes à quitter leurs foyers. D’ici avril, le nombre de déplacés pourrait atteindre 900 000.

Burkina Faso is the latest frontline of wider conflict spreading across the Sahel. Over the last year, fighting has forced more than half a million people to flee their homes. Alexandra Lamarche warns that a failure to act could put hundreds of thousands of civilians in Burkina Faso at risk.

Près de huit ans suite à l’explosion des tensions au Mali, plus de 3.2 millions personnes ont besoin d'aide humanitaire et presque 200,000 sont déplacés dans le pays. Avec la surmilitarisation et le sous‑financement, les Maliens n'ont pas encore retrouvé la paix.

Nearly eight years after longstanding ethnic tensions erupted in Mali, more than 3.2 million people are in need of humanitarian aid and almost 200,000 people are displace within the country. With overmilitarization and underfunding, Malians are struggling to find peace.

Cameroon has long been viewed as a model of stability in a region fraught with conflict. Under the surface, however, tensions between its Anglophone and Francophone populations have simmered for decades. In October 2016, violence erupted in the Anlgophone North-West and South-West (NWSW) regions, and has since displaced more than 530,000 people and killed 1,800. If the government of Cameroon and international donors do not act, the humanitarian situation will rapidly deteriorate.

MINUSCA faces serious challenges in the Central African Republic, but Alexandra Lamarche says many of these challenges can be solved. In a memo, she outlines her recommendations for the country’s new UN Special Representative of the Secretary General Mr. Mankeur Ndiaye as he takes command of the mission.

Years of instability and violence in the Central African Republic have led to large-scale displacement and a desperate need for international aid. This year, more than half of the country's 4.6 million people will depend on humanitarian assistance for protection and survival. But despite the negative trendlines, there is an opportunity for progress.

For decades, armed conflicts have ravaged the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), resulting in massive displacement and critical humanitarian needs. Over 13.1 million Congolese require humanitarian assistance, and with limited resources, humanitarians in the DRC are forced to make tough trade-offs as new conflicts emerge amid protracted ones—with aid delivery slowing down and increasingly diverted with each new outbreak. Insufficient funding threatens to unravel decades of investment and push the DRC deeper into chaos.

The crisis in Northeast Nigeria has reached an inflection point. Widespread famine no longer appears imminent, and the Nigerian military has pushed Boko Haram out of a number of cities and towns. However, the humanitarian crisis is far from over, and major challenges remain in responding to the needs of the internally displaced. At the same time, Nigerian officials are pressing for large-scale returns of the displaced to recently liberated areas—often before conditions can legitimately support returns. The Nigerian government should pause organized returns to insecure areas and work with the international community to improve services and protection for the displaced, while setting the stage for sustainable pathways home. In addition, the government must work to support local integration for those who may never return home.

Months on from the December 2020 elections, the situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) continues to deteriorate. The United States, however, has the perceived neutrality, resources and influence to mediate and make good on its promise that “diplomacy is back.”

Proxy wars pitting France and Chad against Russia and Rwanda threaten to destabilize the entire region while subjecting Central Africans to more violence and instability.

Refugees International and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide offer takeaways on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting atrocity prevention in Cameroon and South Sudan.

Following a recent coup, Mali’s humanitarian crisis is on the brink of a much darker chapter unless immediate action is taken. In UN Dispatch, Alexandra Lamarche provides a roadmap for protecting vulnerable civilians amid the country's political upheaval.

Armed groups from Boko Haram and al-Shabaab in Africa to Hayat Tahrir as-Sham in Syria to MS13 and Barrio 18 gangs in El Salvador continue to engage in violence despite the United Nations’ Secretary-General call for a global ceasefire amid COVID-19.

As COVID-19 spreads, social distancing and sheltering at home are not options for people in Chad. Thousands are fleeing a recent uptick in violence by Boko Haram, but many Chadians now find themselves trapped between violence and the looming humanitarian threat of a new deadly virus.

Soaring violence and displacement are taking over much of the Sahel. In Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, the spread of armed groups and intercommunal violence threaten neighboring West African states. Alexandra Lamarche argues in UN Dispatch that France, the most influential international player in the region, is failing to use its financial and political sway to effectively quell the crisis. 

It is past time for Congress and State Department to step up and play a larger role in addressing the humanitarian consequences of conflict in Cameroon. The alternative—silence and inaction—means more innocent Cameroonian lives will be lost.

Stakes are high for the final round of African Union-led peace negotiations on the Central African Republic (CAR) ,with millions of civilian lives hanging in the balance. But failure is avoidable if the negotiating parties are patient and stop repeating past mistakes.

This is a make-or-break moment for the Central African Republic. After years of conflict, a small window of opportunity is open to make real progress toward peace. Alexandra Lamarche offers three key steps the international community must take to consolidate hard-won gains and improve conditions on the ground.

Over the past month, the Trump administration has slashed over half a billion dollars in assistance to the Palestinians. The humanitarian impact is already being felt and promises to be devastating.

When the militant group Boko Haram took over in 2013, the majority of Bama, Nigeria's population those fled and have yet to return. Nigerian forces successfully recaptured Bama in 2015, and, recently, the city has become the focus of highly publicized reconstruction plans and along with plans for the return of its former residents. But the security situation in surrounding areas remains perilous. With approaching Nigerian elections in 2019, the government wants to return people to Bama, but security and stability should dictate returns, not politics.

An important renewal of global commitment to peacekeeping took place recently at the United Nations Peacekeeping Defense Ministerial conference in Vancouver. Member countries and international organizations presented their commitments to improve and reinforce peacekeeping efforts. But at this time of funding cuts in many countries, the actual fulfillment of those pledges will be a challenge.

As tensions between English- and French-speaking communities in Cameroon continue to rise, RI Advocate Alexandra Lamarche calls on the United States and the international community to facilitate talks between the factions while this emerging crisis can still be mitigated.