Displacement
Displacement across three states
Where the displaced actually are, how well each state counts them, and what a suspended registration does to the number.
Conflict coverage · Central Sahel
AssessmentModerate confidence
Broad regional level only. This surface never maps aid routes, facility locations or operational detail. Locations here are regional; no facility, warehouse, convoy route or aid schedule is published anywhere in this module.
Current state
What civilian pressure looks like now
Moderate confidence · Data as of 2026-08
The central Sahel's humanitarian crisis is not a side-effect of the war; it is the medium the war is fought in. Blockades, sieges, road insecurity and communal violence produce the displacement, hunger and school closures — and the same insecurity blocks the response. Two things about the figures below matter as much as the figures. First, they are agency estimates at regional granularity and they revise often. Second, and more seriously, they are not equally current: Burkina Faso — which hosts roughly three quarters of the region's displaced people — has published no consolidated displacement count since March 2023, so the number still quoted for it in 2026 is three years old. Where that is the case this page says so beside the figure rather than at the bottom of it.
~5.7 million
Region: displaced by end-2026 (projected)
UNHCR projection for the central Sahel, Mauritania and the coastal states of Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Togo, up from 4 million at 30 Sep 2025. Includes refugees and stateless people, not IDPs alone
2.1 million
Burkina Faso: internally displaced
THE LATEST AVAILABLE OFFICIAL FIGURE, NOT A CURRENT MEASUREMENT. No consolidated displacement count has been published since March 2023. It is still widely quoted against 2026 datelines — OCHA's April 2026 Sahel overview carries it unchanged — and it is three years old. Two partial readings exist beside it and cannot be reconciled with it: IOM's 2025 tracking put the displaced near two million, and the national emergency council reported more than 1.1 million returns to areas of origin by October 2025. Read this as the last established count rather than today's
~400,000 (2025)
Burkina Faso: new displacement per year
Registered by the rapid-response coordination platform, similar to 2024 and down from roughly 700,000/year in 2022–2023. A flow figure, not a stock — it cannot be added to or substituted for the 2023 total
4.5 million (1.2m targeted)
Burkina Faso: people in need
OCHA. The reduction against prior years follows a change of targeting methodology based on accessible zones, which OCHA states does not indicate improvement — the same caveat that applies to Mali's figures
5.1 million
Mali: people in need
OCHA 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan. Down more than 20% on 2025 — a change of METHODOLOGY, which OCHA states is not a reflection of any improvement in conditions
3.8 million
Mali: people targeted for response
against a US$577.9m requirement; requirement, people in need and people targeted each fell by more than 20% on the same methodological revision
~414,500
Mali: internally displaced
IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix, February 2026, about ten per cent above February 2025; ~58% children. Registration-based — undercounts unregistered movement, and predates the April–May 2026 offensives
737,000+
Mali: displaced in total, inside and outside
A different population from the IDP figure above, not a revision of it — it counts Malians displaced outside the country as well as within
1.56 million people
Mali: acute food insecurity
projected for 2026; pockets of famine-like conditions reported in the north
227,000+ children
Mali: severe child malnutrition
OCHA projection
~21% of US$771m
Mali: 2025 appeal funded
the lowest funding rate in ten years
Changed in brief2026-08-02 · Humanitarian updated
Civilian pressure, as analytical objectsWhat is under pressure in Sahel, as 6 selectable objects. Each carries its own figures, the module's analysis of it and — where the corpus establishes one — the mechanism by which security conditions reach it.Interrogate Sahel in Explore
Protection
Civilian protection
Civilians between armed groups, state forces and their partners, and who documents what happens to them.
Food & water
Food security and climate shock
Blockade, market prices and rainfall failure — three routes to the same hunger, only one of which is agricultural.
Health & services
Services under the war
Schools and clinics closed by insecurity rather than destroyed by it, and what that removes from a generation.
Humanitarian access
Humanitarian access
Whether assistance can move at all — the roads, the negotiations and the parties whose consent each depends on.
Assistance & funding
The response and its shortfall
What the appeals ask for, what they receive, and which caseload is cut first when they are not funded.
The full picture7 blocks of analysis and 11 dated figures, filed under the pressures above — the module’s own words, with their own vintages
Everything below is authored on this module’s humanitarian record. Figures carry the vintage of the release that produced them, not the date of this page: the section is graded Moderate confidence and its data is stated as of 2026-08.
Displacement across three statesDisplacement
| Indicator | Value | As of | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Region: displaced by end-2026 (projected)UNHCR projection for the central Sahel, Mauritania and the coastal states of Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Togo, up from 4 million at 30 Sep 2025. Includes refugees and stateless people, not IDPs aloneSources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ | ~5.7 million | 2026 | Moderate confidence |
| Burkina Faso: internally displacedTHE LATEST AVAILABLE OFFICIAL FIGURE, NOT A CURRENT MEASUREMENT. No consolidated displacement count has been published since March 2023. It is still widely quoted against 2026 datelines — OCHA's April 2026 Sahel overview carries it unchanged — and it is three years old. Two partial readings exist beside it and cannot be reconciled with it: IOM's 2025 tracking put the displaced near two million, and the national emergency council reported more than 1.1 million returns to areas of origin by October 2025. Read this as the last established count rather than today'sSources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ | 2.1 million | 2023-03 | Low confidence |
| Burkina Faso: new displacement per yearRegistered by the rapid-response coordination platform, similar to 2024 and down from roughly 700,000/year in 2022–2023. A flow figure, not a stock — it cannot be added to or substituted for the 2023 totalSources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ | ~400,000 (2025) | 2025 | Low confidence |
| Mali: internally displacedIOM Displacement Tracking Matrix, February 2026, about ten per cent above February 2025; ~58% children. Registration-based — undercounts unregistered movement, and predates the April–May 2026 offensivesSources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ | ~414,500 | 2026-02 | Moderate confidence |
| Mali: displaced in total, inside and outsideA different population from the IDP figure above, not a revision of it — it counts Malians displaced outside the country as well as withinSources: UNHCR operational data (Mali situation)↗ | 737,000+ | 2026-08 | Moderate confidence |
Where the displaced actually are, and how well it is counted
As of 2026-08
Roughly three quarters of the central Sahel's internally displaced people are in Burkina Faso — which is also the country whose figures are least current. Its consolidated count has not been officially updated since March 2023, when it stood at 2.1 million; that number is still quoted against 2026 datelines and is three years old. What has continued is flow data: about 400,000 newly displaced registered in 2025, similar to 2024, down from roughly 700,000 a year in 2022–2023. A falling flow against an unmeasured stock cannot be read as improvement, and this module does not read it that way. Mali's figures, by contrast, are current but measure two different populations — about 415,000 registered internally displaced, and more than 737,000 displaced inside and outside the country. Niger's displacement is not yet covered here at all. The honest summary is that the region's largest displacement crisis is its least well counted.
Sources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ · UNHCR operational data (Mali situation)↗
Displacement in Mali
As of 2026-08
Displacement is concentrated in the northern and central regions and moves with the fighting: the 2026 offensives displaced people from Kidal, Ménaka and the Mopti countryside, while earlier waves from the Ménaka region fled Islamic State Sahel's campaigns. Malian refugees have crossed into Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso — countries facing their own crises. Two figures are published on this page and they are not alternatives: roughly 415,000 people are registered as internally displaced, while more than 737,000 Malians are reported displaced inside and outside the country. The gap is the refugee population and the limits of registration, and reading either number alone understates or misattributes the movement. Mali's displaced are in turn a fraction of the central Sahel's ~2.8 million, which is itself the point: this is one regional emergency, not three national ones.
Sources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ · UNHCR operational data (Mali situation)↗
What to watch
- Displacement from the northWhether the 2026 fighting around Kidal, Anéfis and Ménaka produces sustained outflows toward Mauritania, Niger and Algeria.
Civilian protectionProtection
Civilian protection
As of 2026-08
Civilians are targeted from several directions at once: jihadist attacks and blockades; Islamic State Sahel's massacres in the tri-border zone; communal militia violence and reprisal, as at Ogossagou; and documented abuses in state and Russian-partnered operations, of which Moura in 2022 remains the gravest. Contested drone strikes near Tinzaouatène have added a further category. Air strikes are now the growing part of that file: an investigation published on 31 July 2026 reported that Africa Corps strikes on the village of Kyrnia, in the Mopti region, on 15 June 2026 killed eight civilians including three children, at a village chief's residence and a cattle market. The pattern the case illustrates matters beyond the incident — treating an armed group's presence in or control of a settlement as sufficient grounds to strike civilian locations within it. Legal characterisations of individual strikes are recorded as the findings of the organisations that make them; official investigations into these cases are rare. No party to this war is a clean actor in it.
Sources: Human Rights Watch investigations↗ · Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect — country monitoring↗ · ACLED conflict data & analysis↗
Food security and climate shockFood & water
| Indicator | Value | As of | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mali: acute food insecurityprojected for 2026; pockets of famine-like conditions reported in the northSources: World Food Programme assessments↗ | 1.56 million people | 2026 | Moderate confidence |
| Mali: severe child malnutritionOCHA projectionSources: World Food Programme assessments↗ | 227,000+ children | 2026 | Moderate confidence |
Food security
As of 2026
Hunger here is a logistics problem before it is a harvest problem. The fuel blockade raised transport costs and cut market supply nationwide; road insecurity strands harvests away from the towns that need them; village blockades in the Niono and Mopti areas cut farmers from fields at planting and harvest. Pockets of famine-like conditions have been reported in northern areas, and malnutrition rates are worst among the displaced.
Sources: World Food Programme assessments↗ · UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗
Climate shocks
As of 2026
Rainfall variability, drought and flooding compound every other pressure, and the farmer–herder competition they sharpen is one of the insurgency's oldest recruiting grounds. Climate is not a separate crisis here — it is an accelerant of the conflict's existing fault lines.
Sources: World Food Programme assessments↗
How security conditions reach this
Road insecurity → market supply → hunger and service collapse
Hunger in Mali is a logistics problem before it is a harvest problem — and the same insecurity that causes it blocks the response.
- Affected area or systemConfirmed
- Access or service disruptionConfirmed
- Civilian conditionConfirmed
- Broader humanitarian significancePlausible exposure
What to watch
- Blockade and food pricesFuel availability drives transport costs, which drive food prices in Bamako, Ségou and Kayes. Watch price series and market supply, not just attack counts.
Access depends on:Mali's fuel import corridors
Ground:Inner Niger Delta and the central belt
Parties:JNIMMali (transition)
Services under the warHealth & services
Services under the war
As of 2026
Thousands of schools have closed across the central and northern regions, from direct threats, teacher displacement and insecurity — a generation's education traded for the war's duration. Health facilities in contested areas run intermittently or not at all, on supply chains that depend on the same roads everything else does.
Humanitarian accessHumanitarian access
Humanitarian access
As of 2026
Access is the binding constraint. Roads are mined and ambushed, armed groups tax or block movement, and authorisation regimes are slow; agencies negotiate passage with whoever holds each stretch of road. Access constraints also mean the figures on this page are floors, not ceilings — the least reachable areas are the least counted. This module deliberately maps humanitarian data at broad regional level only.
Sources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ · ACLED conflict data & analysis↗
What to watch
- Access negotiationWhether agencies can keep negotiating passage with armed groups as control fragments further — the difference between a counted crisis and an invisible one.
The response and its shortfallAssistance & funding
| Indicator | Value | As of | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burkina Faso: people in needOCHA. The reduction against prior years follows a change of targeting methodology based on accessible zones, which OCHA states does not indicate improvement — the same caveat that applies to Mali's figuresSources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ | 4.5 million (1.2m targeted) | 2026 | Moderate confidence |
| Mali: people in needOCHA 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan. Down more than 20% on 2025 — a change of METHODOLOGY, which OCHA states is not a reflection of any improvement in conditionsSources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ | 5.1 million | 2026 | High confidence |
| Mali: people targeted for responseagainst a US$577.9m requirement; requirement, people in need and people targeted each fell by more than 20% on the same methodological revisionSources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ | 3.8 million | 2026 | High confidence |
| Mali: 2025 appeal fundedthe lowest funding rate in ten yearsSources: UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)↗ | ~21% of US$771m | 2025-12 | High confidence |
What to watch
- The funding gapThe 2025 appeal drew ~21% of requirements. Watch whether 2026 funding improves, and what agencies cut when it does not.
Evidence and grading
- Figures
- Agency estimates on their own revision cycles. Each figure carries the date it is for; nothing on this surface averages, totals or compares across two vintages.
- Confidence
- How well established Vigil considers this assessment to be. It is not a measure of how severe the situation is.