Link to article: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-islamic-state-group-ouagadougou-burkina-faso-business-b40b1270fbd8f90afa6c9aaada4fde82
Recently in Burkina Faso hunger rates skyrocketed due to violence linked to jihadists. A woman retells her horrible story of being driven out of her village and not being able to feed her baby. This rise in starvation is linked to violence connected to al-Qaeda and Islamic State group known terrorist groups. On record there are 3,5 million people food insecure, and 630,000 on brink of starvation and many more unaccounted for. This is a massive crisis and these figures have haseena 82% increase from last year. Hospitals are being overrun, families are fleeing from violence, and food prices are rising from scarcity. On Top of this the president was ousted by soldiers for the junta, with claims of better security which has only led to a 11% increase in violence.
My take on this article is that governments in the sahel and most of Africa are very weak and have no way of dealing with all the social, economical, racial, ethnic divisions that occur in this region. With the invasive Al-Qaeda and ISIS going around driving poor families out of their homes. The government can barely, with the help of foergn aid, help their starving people. On Top of this not long ago the sitting elected president was ousted by the ruling junta. This is a clear sign that Burkina Faso along with many other governments have no solutions to heri country’s problems because they lack the basic groundwork of a government.
This article connects to class with topics of state characteristics, and UN role on the world stage. The political organization of Africa specifically countries similar to Burkina faso try methods of consensus to gain organization. Issues of several different social cleavages in the country tear these concerns apart, leading some rulers to lean into coercion to assemble order in some way. This leads to many coupes because of lack of action or power by the political organization brought together by consensus. These transitions can be caused by many different factors, some being: economic/resource, ethnic, religious etc. These then leave many people suffering its aftereffects. This has led the UN to step in as aid with different UN agencies like UNICEF to aid in issues like hunger which is hurting Burkina Faso currently.