Millions of children in the Central Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger) are severely affected by a mix of armed conflict, mass displacement, climate shocks, and entrenched poverty. Mobilizing resources and designing context-specific responses to address both shared vulnerabilities and country-specific needs demand priority action.
The crisis is broad, deepening, and urgent; recent humanitarian monitoring points to the Central Sahel crisis as one of world’s fastest-growing child-rights emergencies. UN data report that more than 10 million children across the three countries required humanitarian assistance in 2023. While each country has a distinctive demographic and political profile, the humanitarian threat to children reveals troubling commonalities: collapsing access to education and health services, soaring malnutrition rates, and mounting protection risks that include child marriage and recruitment by armed groups.
In Burkina Faso, more than one in five schools are closed due to insecurity, leaving over 2 million children without access to education. In Mali, over 1,100 schools are shut due to insecurity, leaving more than 2 million children aged 5–17 currently out of school. Niger, with one of the highest fertility rates in the world, struggles under immense demographic pressure that overwhelms already fragile health, nutrition, and education systems. Across the three countries, humanitarian appeals remain chronically underfunded, forcing agencies to make difficult choices about which lifesaving services to prioritize.
Across the Central Sahel, schools are collateral victims of conflict and instability; it is one of the world’s hardest-hit regions when it comes to safe learning opportunities. Thousands of education facilities are either destroyed, occupied by armed groups, or considered too dangerous for teachers and students to access. The consequences are both immediate, with rising out-of-school rates and weakened literacy levels, and generational, as children excluded from classrooms are more vulnerable to child labor, early marriage, or recruitment into armed groups. Children are denied their right to learn, while the region’s long-term development prospects are undermined as an entire generation risks missing out on foundational skills. UNICEF reports that school closures and attacks on education are surging across Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.
The scale of the crisis varies by country but shares alarming similarities. In Burkina Faso, more than 20% of schools are closed due to insecurity, leaving 2 million children in need of educational support. In Mali, over 1,100 schools are shut, directly affecting more than 350,000 children; nationwide, more than 2 million children aged 5–17 are out of school. In Niger, disruptions are concentrated in regions like Tillabéry and Diffa, where insecurity and displacement prevent thousands of children from attending class. Niger also faces the compounding pressure of a surging youth population that is expected to nearly double by 2050, straining already fragile education systems. With classrooms increasingly under attack or abandoned, the shared loss of education across the Central Sahel deprives children of learning with long-term impacts on the stability and economic prospects of their communities.
Malnutrition is a devastating yet preventable threat to children in the Central Sahel. It acts as a shock multiplier, weakening immune systems and making children more vulnerable to diseases such as malaria, measles, and respiratory infections. In Niger, where recurrent floods, droughts, and conflict have eroded food systems and strained already fragile health services, wasting and stunting rates are alarmingly high. According to IPC projections, nearly 1.7 million children aged 6 to 59 months are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition between August 2024 and July 2025, including over 412,000 cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and about 1.3 million cases of moderate acute malnutrition. Across the region, limited access to primary health care compounds the crisis, with many clinics either closed, understaffed, or overwhelmed by displacement-related needs.
The scope of the crisis is reflected in country-level data. In Burkina Faso, UNICEF provided in 2025 therapeutic food stocks to treat over 120,000 children aged six months to five years suffering from severe acute malnutrition. The support also includes multi-micronutrient powders, vitamin/mineral supplementation for adolescent girls and pregnant or breastfeeding women. Niger’s Humanitarian Action for Children Appeal indicates that 1.5 million children require urgent assistance due to ongoing conflicts, environmental crises, population displacement, and decreased access to essential services. Many regions exceed emergency thresholds for wasting, and anemia, stunting, and other nutritional deficiencies are widespread. The immediate consequences are rising child morbidity and mortality; chronic malnutrition leads to lost cognitive and physical development, perpetuating cycles of poverty and vulnerability that will shape the Sahel’s future.
Children across the Central Sahel face a widening set of protection risks as insecurity and displacement deepen. With many internally displaced people, many children are separated from caregivers and schooling, increasing their exposure to exploitation, hazardous labor, and recruitment by armed groups. In Mali, thousands of children received mental-health and psychosocial support in early 2025 with unaccompanied and separated children identified and referred for family tracing or alternative care. In Burkina Faso, operational updates and UN/agency factsheets document large new displacement waves and rising protection caseloads, including many children at heightened risk of exploitation and early marriage in displacement settings. In Niger, UNHCR operational updates and country protection pages highlight insecurity in border regions such as Tillabéry and Diffa has left displaced children especially vulnerable to recruitment, family separation, and limited access to schooling and psychosocial support.
Reported gender-based violence (GBV) has increased in camps and host communities, as overcrowding, lost livelihoods, and weak rule of law increase risks for adolescent girls and women. Agencies such as UNICEF, UNHCR, and the Global Protection Cluster, alongside local NGOs, warn that needs, from family tracing and psychosocial support to community-based child protection services and legal aid, are growing faster than response capacity; the Global Protection Cluster’s protection analysis updates and related cluster reporting underscore the gap between demand and available services across the Sahel. The combination of displacement, violence, and weakened community protection networks leaves children exposed to harms with potentially lifelong consequences, reinforcing the urgency of scaled, child-sensitive protection programming.
Distinctive country challenges need to be reflected in action proposals. In Burkina Faso, the rapid expansion of armed conflict has produced one of the fastest-growing displacement crises in the world: entire communities have been uprooted, and education and health systems are under enormous strain. Humanitarian plans for 2025 estimate that millions of children will require lifesaving services. Burkina Faso has the highest rate of school closures in the Sahel, with more than 6,000 schools shut down due to violence, affecting over 1 million children (UNICEF data).
In Mali, years of conflict involving multiple armed groups have produced persistent insecurity and governance gaps, leaving children exposed to recruitment, displacement, and other protection abuses. Despite this, some 2024 programs managed to expand temporary learning spaces and improve gender parity in schooling.
Niger, by contrast, faces overlapping pressures of conflict and rapid population growth. With a very young population, Niger’s health, nutrition, and education systems are under severe demographic pressure, and insecurity in regions such as Tillabéry and Diffa further exacerbates these challenges.
Burkina Faso requires rapid-scaled emergency education and protection in displacement sites; Mali needs long-term protective services for children affected by protracted conflict; Niger needs investments that combine humanitarian assistance with longer-term resilience for health, nutrition, and education systems. Without such context-specific strategies, millions of children risk irreversible harm to their learning, physical health, and overall development.
Looking ahead, what is most needed is coordinated and smart regional approaches, with sustained funding, robust cross-border coordination, and protection-first strategies that prioritize children’s safety, learning, and nutrition. Strengthening data collection, monitoring, and early-warning systems can also improve targeting and responsiveness. Scaling up effective, context-tailored interventions today can protect a generation and help stabilize communities for the future.
