On 14 December 2023, tragedy struck Bouro, a small village in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region, changing the trajectory of many families forever. Burkinabè military forces and allied militias attacked the community, killing numerous civilian residents. Samer (not his real name), a resident of the community, told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that 19 of his relatives were killed in the attack.
“I found my family and my neighbour’s family massacred. My wives [and] my children were dead,” Samer told HRW. “I found the bodies lying on the ground, bullets in their heads, chests.”
He said himself and his 11-year-old son were the only members of his family to survive the onslaught. This forced him to flee to neighbouring Mali.
Between January 2023 and August 2025, the Burkina Faso military junta killed at least 1,837 civilians across 11 regions, according to a new HRW report. The report, which details 57 incidents based on 450 interviews and open-source material analysis, says that the military and the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDP) carried out grave abuses during dozens of operations. These abuses include unlawful killings, summary executions, torture, ill-treatment, the looting of livestock, and the burning of homes.
In another incident in February 2024, HRW reports that the Burkinabè military summarily executed 223 civilians, including at least 56 children in the villages of Nondin and Soro in northern Yatenga province of the country. The military accused the victims of collaborating with Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an armed Islamist militant group operating primarily in the Sahel region.
The Beginning
The escalating conflict in Burkina Faso began in 2016 after armed groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic state crossed from neighbouring Mali. This instability prompted a military takeover on 30 September 2022, when Captain Ibrahim Traoré overthrew interim president Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, a coup leader who had seized power earlier that year. Traoré and his fellow officers dissolved the government and suspended the constitution, marking the country’s second coup in eight months.
The junta justified the takeover on security grounds, arguing that Damiba had failed to contain the Islamist insurgency. They also cited poor governance and a loss of territorial control. However, recent reports suggest the junta has since become a greater threat to civilians than even the JNIM. This trend reflects a broader pattern across Africa, which has recently witnessed military takeovers in Niger, Gabon, and Guinea-Bissau. These juntas typically oust democratic regimes under the pretext of addressing insecurity.
Beyond physical violence, the junta has restricted freedom of expression and cracked down on the media. HRW warns that the “grievous harm suffered by civilians in the conflict and the junta’s suppression of public dissent and criticism mean that Burkina Faso’s international partners need to play a critical role to break the country’s long-standing cycles of abuses and impunity and promote accountability.”
The International Press Institute (IPI) notes that media freedom across the Sahel is reaching a dangerous low. Military regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are intensifying systematic crackdowns on journalists to maintain power. What began as a series of coups has evolved into authoritarian consolidation, where controlling the flow of information is central to the regimes’ survival.
HRW urges the Burkinabè government to investigate and discipline security force personnel responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The government should “Coordinate with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to seek technical, financial, and logistical assistance for domestic investigative and judicial bodies,” HRW says.
