Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traore [Stanislav Krasilnikov/RIA Novosti via AP]
Ousmane Diallo did not mince words. For the Amnesty International researcher covering the Sahel, Wednesday’s announcement from Ouagadougou was not an administrative measure — it was an assault. “We are alarmed and deeply concerned by this flagrant attack on the right to freedom of association,” he said, hours after Burkina Faso’s military government ordered the dissolution of 118 NGOs and associations, many of them human rights bodies operating at the heart of the country’s civil society.
The Ministry of Territorial Administration and Mobility announced the sweeping ban, citing compliance with “current legal provisions.” Territorial Administration Minister Emile Zerbo, who signed off on the directive, issued a pointed warning to the leadership of the affected organisations: “Any offender faces the penalties provided for under current regulations.” His statement invited the newly banned associations to align themselves with a restrictive law passed in July 2025 — legislation that itself had already triggered the revocation of authorisation for 21 rights groups and the suspension of 10 others within its first month of enactment.
All 118 dissolved organisations are based in Burkina Faso. Their shuttering is the most dramatic step yet in an escalating campaign against independent civic life since Captain Ibrahim Traore seized power in a September 2022 coup, the country’s second military takeover within a single year.
Diallo, Amnesty’s senior researcher for the Sahel region, argued the move went beyond any domestic legal framework. “This dissolution is also entirely inconsistent and incompatible with Burkina Faso’s international human rights obligations,” he said, adding that the crackdown was “part of a much broader effort to silence civil society through a combination of repressive tactics that include abusive legislation, intimidation, harassment, arbitrary detention, and prosecution of human rights defenders and activists.” He called on authorities to “immediately” rescind the decision.
Amnesty International described the latest action as evidence of an “intensifying crackdown” — a characterisation supported by the pace of Traore’s reforms since consolidating power. Last November, all national and international NGOs were ordered to shut their commercial bank accounts and transfer funds to a newly created state-controlled bank, a measure critics said was designed to strangle independent organisations financially. In January, political parties were formally dissolved following three years of suspension. And earlier this month, Traore told citizens they must “forget about” democracy — a remark that drew international condemnation but underscored the ideological direction of his administration.
The crackdown on civil society unfolds against the backdrop of a brutal and protracted insurgency. Burkina Faso has been battling armed groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara for nearly a decade, a conflict that has displaced millions and left large swaths of the country’s north and east beyond government control. Traore’s government has repeatedly accused internationally funded NGOs of spying for or colluding with these groups — allegations that rights organisations consistently deny, but which have served as a political justification for successive waves of restrictions.
The military government’s trajectory has drawn comparisons to neighbouring Mali and Niger, where juntas that came to power around the same period have similarly expelled Western NGOs, expelled French forces, and pivoted toward closer ties with Russia. All three countries have since withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), forming their own Alliance of Sahel States in 2023. Whether Wednesday’s dissolution order signals further alignment with that authoritarian regional pattern — or a more extreme domestic course — remains to be seen. What is clear, Amnesty’s Diallo said, is that it is “at odds with the constitution of Burkina Faso” itself.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah