SUMMARY
Burkina Faso was long seen as a beacon of stability in a trouble-hit region, and during the first two and a half decades after 1989, no organized violence was recorded in the country. In 2015, the country took a step towards democracy by holding its first democratic election. However, instead of cementing its progress, the following years saw the country immersed in organized violence, as two state-based conflicts erupted, and with them, escalating levels of one-sided violence, carried out by several actors.
Since 1989, Burkina Faso has experienced the intrastate, non-state and one-sided categories of organized violence, as defined by UCDP.
2025
In 2025, the number of fatalities from organized violence increased once more, after a sharp decline the year prior. At a total of almost 4450 deaths, this was the second highest notation ever in Burkina Faso.
As in all years since 2019, a majority of all fatalities were incurred in violence in state-based conflicts. Clearly driving the trend in organized violence, it was a major escalation in specifically the conflict between the Burkinabe government and al-Qaida-loyal JNIM over government power, that led to the overall increase. In 2025, violence in this conflict caused close to 2950 fatalities, up by 38 % from 2024. JNIM thus remained a credible threat to the regime, and carried out attacks over large parts of the country, effectively besieging government-held population centers. The second state-based conflict active in Burkina Faso – the one fought between the government and IS’ Sahel Province (ISSP) – remained marginal in comparison, causing less than 100 fatalities and affecting only the northeastern-most part of the country.
While the state-based category saw a sharp escalation, the opposite was true for one-sided violence, where the number of fatalities decreased from over 2000 in 2024, to a little over 1250. The same actors that had been responsible for this all-time-high notation the year prior – the country’s armed forces and JNIM – continued to target the civilian population, but the latter did so to a vastly lesser extent, with fatalities going from over 1100 fatalities in 2024, to just over 400. Instead, with almost 800 deaths, it was the government side that carried out the most one-sided killings in 2025. Regardless, the two actors remained locked in the same pattern of targeting civilians perceived to support their opponents. The islamist tended to mainly target villages which had contributed men to the VDPs (the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland), an auxiliary unit to the armed forces, while a hallmark for the army and the VDPs was to attack civilians in retaliation for JNIM attacks. March was a particularly dark months, as the military carried out a number of large-scale massacres, at first in and around Solenzo in the Boucle du Mouhoun region, and then in a number of villages is Komandjoari province in the east. The massacres in Solenzo seem to be an example of how the armed forces view the civilian population as accomplices in areas with a strong JNIM presence, especially when they are Fulani, an ethnic group strongly associated with the group. The Komandjaouri killings appears to have been in response to an attack on the Foutouri military detachment by JNIM a few days earlier. In all, these massacres killed at least 450 civilians. JNIM’s worst atrocities occurred in the same Boucle du Mouhoun, a month later. In early April, the armed forces entered a string of villages, claiming to have liberated them from the islamists. Civilians were celebrating and a number of them asked to join the VDP. However, the army left the following day, without providing weapons, whereby JNIM returned and killed between 187 and 360 civilians.
Over the years, developments in the non-state category have only had minor implications for the overall level of organized violence in Burkina Faso. While this remained the case in 2025, the one non-state conflict active in the country escalated markedly; fighting between ISSP and JNIM went from 20 fatalities to over 140.
Jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso and its ramifications
In 2016, Burkina Faso was plunged into the same dynamic seen in neighboring Sahel countries, with jihadi groups challenging the state, and with that igniting underlying ethnic- and social tensions, causing mobilization along ethnic lines, and ensuing one-sided violence and non-state conflicts. During 2016-2018, violence remained relatively contained in terms of fatalities, and also – but to a lesser degree – the area affected. The first sign of the coming onslaught was the eruption of one-sided violence in 2016. In mid-January, the originally Algerian Islamist group AQIM carried out a one-sided attack in the country’s capital Ouagadougou. Targeting the Cappuccino restaurant and the Splendid Hotel, the group killed some 25 civilians, before the security forces were able to break the de-facto siege. While AQIM could be argued to be an imported problem, further north, in the impoverished Soum province a homegrown one was starting to emerge. Just across the border in Mali, several Islamist groups were engaged in a prolonged conflict against the Malian government, and in Soum, tensions were growing as it became increasingly clear that there were Burkinabe nationals among the jihadists. Amid escalating reports of human rights abuses by the Burkinabe army, the home-grown jihadist group Ansaroul Islam emerged at the end of the year, and began attacking both the Burkinabe government and civilians, continuing into 2017.
While it was one-sided violence that was the first sign of what was to come, by 2018, a new state-based conflict over government power had erupted and it was developments in this category that began driving the trend in the escalating number of fatalities. While remaining on a relatively low level at this point, violence soon began to expand in terms of groups and objectives, and also beginning to affect more areas of the country. The background to this was developments in a transnational jihadist group the year before. In Mars 2017, several jihadist groups active in Mali - (AQIM, FLM and Ansar Dine - joined forces and formed the Al-Qaida-linked group JNIM. The new alliance expanded its goals significantly, now propagating for jihad in all Sahelian countries. Soon thereafter, JNIM launched attacks in both Niger and Burkina Faso. In parallel, there were also signs that the Greater Sahara section of IS (later called IS Sahel Province, ISSP) had entered the country and established itself in the Oudalan province, neighboring Soum, and from 2019 onward, both groups were actively fighting the Burkinabe government in two steadily escalating, separate state-based conflicts. At this point, violence was mainly concentrated to the northern Sahel region’s border area with Mali, but also began to move further southeast, to Burkina’s Est region.
Since 2019, the security situation has continuously worsened in the country, with all years apart from 2020 seeing an ever-increasing death toll. The most dramatic escalations occurred in 2019, 2022, and 2023. The increase in 2019 was driven by a marked escalation in one-sided violence and, to a lesser extent in state-based conflict, whereas the opposite was the case for the two latter years. Nonetheless, the violence was all part of the same dynamics, as the actors carrying out targeted killings of civilians, did so in the context of the ongoing intrastate conflicts; all actors were either parties to one of the conflicts, or had become relevant in relation to it. The violence gained an increasingly clear-cut ethnic dimension, as the jihadists were seen as representing the Fulani ethnic group, whereby revenge for jihadist attacks was meted out against the civilian Fulani population. As for the jihadists, both JNIM and IS initially mainly targeted Mossi communities, seen as supporting the Koglweogo, a self-defense community-based security force which had gained prominence during the ongoing conflict. After 2020, they more generally attacked those that they considered hostile to their cause, having taking part in the creation of the auxiliary unit to the armed forces, the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDPs).
Aside from escalating in terms of number of fatalities, the violence also spread geographically over the following years, reaching and devastating new areas. The main reason for this was that JNIM (from 2018 also incorporating Ansaroul Islam) continuously succeeded in expanding its area of operation in all directions, and by 2023, almost all regions of the country were affected. With the group’s move south, it increasingly became a threat to the coastal West Africa states Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Benin, with the latter two seeing the eruption of intrastate conflicts in 2022. As for the other state-based conflict active in Burkina Faso – that between the government and IS' Sahel wing (ISSP) – it was more contained both in terms of fatalities and geographical reach, being fought mainly in Sahel region’s Oudalan and Seno provinces, in the north-easternmost part of the country.
With the security situation deteriorating over several years, this eventually bled into the political life of the country, and in 2022 Burkina Faso saw two military coups (neither of which caused fighting that crossed the 25 battle-related deaths threshold). Spawned by escalating violence in both state-based conflicts at the end of 2021, the first coup d’état was carried out on 23-24 January, when democratically elected President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré was ousted from power by a group of soldiers. Calling themselves the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration, the junta gave the president’s inability to contain the Islamist conflicts and as the reason for the coup. A few days later, the junta restored the constitution and appointed Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba as interim president. Only eight months later, on 30 September, Damiba was ousted in a new coup, and Captain Ibrahim Traoré seized power. As of 2025, the coups had failed to change the tide of the conflicts which had been one of the bold stated goal of the new juntas. Instead, violence in the two conflicts in general, and the one between the government and JNIM, in particular, has escalated markedly.
In the shadow of the high intensity state-based conflicts and one-sided violence, Burkina Faso has also been the scene of two non-state conflict: JNIM-Koglweogo and IS-JNIM. While the former was short-lived and fought on a small scale, the latter was more intense. Erupting in 2020, the conflict was mainly fought across the border in Mali, but also Soum, Oudalan and Seno provinces in Sahel region saw heavy bouts of fighting.
Pre-1989 conflicts
UCDP has also recorded two conflicts involving Burkina Faso in the pre-1989 period: one interstate conflict, pitting the country against neighboring Mali, and one intrastate conflict over government power.
The conflict between Burkina Faso and Mali erupted in December 1985, and was fought over parts of its border region (known as the Agacher strip, or the Oudalan area). The conflict had its roots in the arbitrary delineation of national borders in colonial times, and the zone of contention stretched 100 miles, from Dionouga in the west, to the border with Niger in the east. Its location near the Beli River – situated north of Djibo in Upper Volta and south of Hombouri of Mali – secured for parts of the area a permanent supply of water, a strategic commodity for two land-locked countries in a dry region. After decades of unsuccessful attempts to resolve the issue peacefully, punctuated by small-scale clashes in 1974, out-right fighting thus erupted in December 1985. The armed conflict was brief, however, and limited to a handful of military engagements, before a cessation of hostilities agreement came into effect on 31 December. The conflict issue could finally be resolved in 1986 through a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, whereby the disputed area was divided into two parts, roughly equal in size.
After a long string of oftentimes bloodless coups and coup attempts since independence in 1960, 1987 saw a coup d’état that turned violent and escalated to the level of intrastate conflict, killing around 100 people. During the year, rumors had started to circulate about rifts in the government, and in October, Thomas Sankara – who himself had seized power in a coup in 1983 – was ousted by Captain Blaise Compaoré, backed by key figures Commandant Jean-Baptiste Lingani and Captain Henri Zongo, who led an assault on the presidential palace in Ouagadougou. Compaoré subsequently went on to preserve his hold on power until 2014, when he, in turn, was forced by the military to step down.
