By Armel Baily – “I’m happy — it’s like coming back home,” said Malian refugee Ousmane Wanaher, 34, returning to the camp in northeastern Burkina Faso from which he had been driven out by jihadist attacks a year ago. The 9,000-capacity Goudebou camp is a cherished haven for many Malians who have fled violence at home, often at the hands of armed Islamists. In March 2020, the camp was forced to close after its security post came under assault — the worst in a string of attacks.
The diehards who had remained to the end had to leave, while a refugee camp at Mentao in the same region on the Malian border was also closed, pitching thousands of vulnerable people into an even more uncertain future. Around a thousand chose to return to Mali, braving the violence there, and most of the others made for towns in northern Burkina Faso where they scratched a living.
Since December, Burkina authorities and the UNHCR refugee agency have been running convoys to bring refugees back to Goudebou, where security and support have been beefed up. “We feel safe, because we can see the security forces patrolling, we can even see small planes overflying the camp,” said Malian refugee Moussa Ag Maloka, who had returned to the camp from the town of Dori.
Jihadist attacks from Mali spread into once-peaceful Burkina Faso from 2015, inflicting a toll that now stands at over 1,200 dead while another a million have fled their homes. Violence is worst in the restive “three-border” zone where the country’s frontiers with those of Mali and Niger converge. Jihadist groups with links to Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State (IS) group are active and ruthless. UN figures show that of those who were helped to return to Mali, more than 600 are now back in Goudebou. Others have made their own way back.
“Things have changed now. There are shelters, lots of infrastructure like the school and the dispensary has reopened. Above all, there’s security,” Burkina’s foreign minister, Alpha Barry, said on a visit to the camp on March 11. Burkinabe officials said security numbers and patrols have been stepped up, and their task also includes protecting local communities. A barracks is being built at the camp to house soldiers, gendarmes and police, a security source said.
‘Rebirth’
“We all had trouble finding shelter and getting essential services when we left Goudebou,” said Wanaher, sitting in one of the 200-hectare (500-acre) camp’s 2,000 tents. “We didn’t have the money to rent homes and it was still dangerous to go back to Mali.” Since December, almost 8,000 people have arrived from towns in the region, said UNHCR representative Shelubale Paul Ali-Pauni. “The government’s concern, and ours, is to protect the refugees, to bring them together where they’ll be better protected.”
Minister Barry said that “for us, the challenge is to gather all of the 20,000 refugees in the Sahel in Burkina at one spot.” Halidou Diallo, a representative from the local community which also has access to the camp’s services, said that the refugees’ arrival had meant “a rebirth”. “It wasn’t just the refugees who fled. Local people fled too. Today the refugees are coming back and us with them,” he said. Cheik Haidara, a man in his 50s who fled Mali in 2012 with his eight-member family, said the shelters were “well-made and spacious” and gave high praise for water points, a health centre and a primary school. He was waiting for the nursery to reopen so that his youngest sons, both aged three, could be cared for. His greatest hope was to “see my daughter pass her end-of-year exams” after she came top of her class at the camp school, which has 1,166 pupils.
