Burkina Faso’s military government on Monday, August 18, expelled the top United Nations representative in the country after a UN report accused armed groups and government-backed forces of recruiting children in the country’s jihadist conflict.
In a statement, the junta declared UN resident humanitarian coordinator Carol Flore-Smereczniak “persona non grata,” blaming her for what it called “baseless” allegations contained in the March report Children and armed conflict in Burkina Faso. The government accused the UN of compiling “falsehoods” and failing to provide investigative evidence to support its findings.
The report documented grave violations against minors, including child recruitment, killings, rape, sexual violence, abductions, and attacks on schools and hospitals. Most of the abuses were attributed to jihadist groups such as the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). However, investigators also found that Burkina Faso’s defence and security forces, along with their civilian auxiliaries, the Volunteers for the Defence of the Nation, were responsible for about a fifth of the violations.
Among the verified cases, VDP members were accused of abducting 23 children and committing four of 20 confirmed r@pes.
Flore-Smereczniak, a Mauritian national who assumed her post in July 2024, is the second senior UN official to be expelled from Burkina Faso in recent years. In December 2022, the junta expelled her predecessor Barbara Manzi, an Italian national, under similar circumstances.
Burkina Faso has been battling jihadist insurgencies for more than a decade. Since the military seized power in September 2022, the junta has promised to restore security but has struggled to contain escalating violence. More than 26,000 people, civilians and soldiers, have been killed since the conflict began, over half of them in the last three years.