- State affiliation · Burkina Faso
- Vigil-Kategoriezeichen · kein offizielles Abzeichen
Herkunft der Identitätsangaben
State affiliation: Burkina Faso.
Vigil-Kategoriezeichen — abgeleitet aus Bereich, Führungsebene und Rolle, die dieser Eintrag selbst angibt. Kein offizielles Abzeichen.
Kurz gefasst
Die staatlich bewaffnete zivile Hilfstruppe Burkina Fasos — 2020 per Gesetz geschaffen, seit 2022 zentral für den „totalen Krieg“ der Regierung und Gegenstand dokumentierter Übergriffe gegen Fulani-Gemeinschaften.
- Geltungsbereich
- Struktur, Rolle, Entstehung und Verknüpfungen. Keine unterstellten Einträge veröffentlicht.
- Unterstellung
- Unterstellung bestätigt
- Quellen
- 4 im Eintrag
- Eintragsstatus
- Vollständig
- Allgemeines Tätigkeitsfeld
- Nationwide, concentrated where the insurgency is heaviest — the Sahel, Nord, Centre-Nord and Est regions. Placement follows the army units the volunteers are attached to; no unit locations are published here.
- Bemerkenswerte Geschichte
- Created by law on 21 January 2020, after a mass-casualty JNIM attack, to mobilise, train and arm civilians to defend their own communities. ACLED recorded roughly 28,000 active volunteers by 2022; a recruitment drive in October and November 2022 targeted 50,000 and drew about 90,000 sign-ups — a figure that measures applications rather than deployed strength. Under Captain Ibrahim Traoré from September 2022 the force became central to a declared "total war", moving from auxiliary tasks into direct combat, including coordinated air and ground operations. ACLED counts more than a thousand armed engagements involving the VDP since its creation, with over 5,000 reported fatalities, and an average yearly increase in its activity of 82% between 2020 and 2023. The institution is now being enlarged again. On 24 April 2026 the Council of Ministers adopted a draft law creating a 100,000-strong military reserve by the end of 2026, presented by Defence Minister Célestin Simporé as embedding "patriotic defence within a logic of citizen participation"; the armed forces launched recruitment competitions for about 12,000 personnel two days earlier; and on 1 June 2026 the BVDP announced the recruitment of 5,000 volunteers for integration into the armed forces.
- Stärken
- Local knowledge and presence in places the army cannot garrison; very large mobilisable numbers at low cost; a legal framework that makes the mobilisation an instrument of state policy rather than an informal militia.
- Einschränkungen
- Two to three weeks of training against an experienced insurgency. Recruitment has largely favoured sedentary communities and excluded Fulani and pastoralist populations, which has sharpened the ethnic fault line the insurgency recruits along — and the documented abuses run the same way. Reported conduct includes extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, looting and sexual violence, disproportionately against Fulani communities; ACLED counted roughly 80 VDP attacks on civilians in Traoré's first fifteen months against about 60 across Kaboré's two-year tenure. Human Rights Watch, assessing the 2026 reserve expansion, said it risks multiplying harms it has already documented, questioned whether training at that scale and speed can produce a rights-respecting force, noted that the government has suspended civil society organisations providing human-rights training, and warned that arming civilians blurs the line between combatants and non-combatants and makes host communities targets. Those are that organisation's assessments, recorded as its findings.
Gemeldete und historische Ausrüstungszuordnungen
Motorcycles (insurgent mobility): Volunteers are reported patrolling and responding on motorcycles, and their motorcycle-borne arrival features in documented abuse cases; a reported edge, not a holding. Technicals (armed pickups): Armed pickups appear in footage of volunteers operating with army units; whether they are the auxiliaries' own or the attached unit's is not established.
Verwandte Organisationen
- Burkina Faso Armed Forces Institutionell verbunden mit · Stand 2026-08 · hohe Konfidenz
Auxiliary rather than integrated: VDP units serve under the command of the army, police or gendarmerie unit nearest them. From 2026 a stream of volunteers is being recruited directly into the armed forces, which blurs a distinction the 2020 law drew clearly.
- National Gendarmerie of Burkina Faso Institutionell verbunden mit · Stand 2026-08 · mittlere Konfidenz
In districts without an army garrison the volunteer auxiliaries are raised and directed through the gendarmerie brigade; the arrangement is described in law and reported unevenly in practice.
Entstehung und institutionelle Geschichte
Created by law on 21 January 2020 under President Roch Kaboré. Volunteers receive two to three weeks of training at regional garrisons or the National Patriotic Watch Brigade centre, then serve under the command of the nearby military, police or gendarmerie unit. The Brigade des Volontaires pour la Défense de la Patrie (BVDP) is the training and command structure for the force, not an alternative name for it.
Kampagnen
Kampagnen, die diese Organisation als Beteiligte nennen. Der Kampagneneintrag ist Träger der Beziehung und stuft sie ein; diese Liste wird berechnet.
- Die Einkesselung von Djibo Reported participant · Since February 2022 · moderate confidence · as of 2026-10
The volunteer auxiliaries serve with the garrison and on the convoys, and pro-government militia elements were reported to have killed about 20 civilians attempting to leave the town after the April 2022 negotiation collapsed; which force is not established in the reporting, and the edge is reported for that reason.
Schlüsselereignisse
Barsalogho — Hunderte beim Ausheben eines Verteidigungsgrabens getötet
Am 24. August 2024 griffen Kämpfer von JNIM Hunderte Zivilisten an, die einen Graben zum Schutz der Stadt Barsalogho in der Region Centre-Nord aushoben, sowie die Soldaten bei ihnen. Human Rights Watch verifizierte anhand von Videoanalysen und Zeugen mindestens 133 Tote, darunter Dutzende Kinder, und mindestens 200 Verletzte und stellte fest, dass Soldaten die Bewohner unter Drohungen zum Graben gezwungen hatten; andere Schätzungen reichen von 200 bis zu mehreren Hundert, und die Regierung hat keine Opferzahl veröffentlicht. JNIM bekannte sich zu dem Angriff und sagte, es habe etwa 300 Menschen getötet, die es als dem Staat zugehörig betrachtete.
Schnellaktionen
Zugang zum System
Wo dieser Eintrag an den Rest von Vigil anschließt. Jede Zeile steht hier, weil diese Organisation tatsächlich dorthin reicht.
Eingeschätzt zum Stand — 2026-08 Zuletzt überprüft — 2026-10-29
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