Africa’s grim ranking: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DRC world’s most neglected crises

Three African countries — Burkina Faso, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — top a list of the world’s most neglected crises for the second year in a row, according to a new report released by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

The NRC’s annual report on the world’s most neglected displacement crises says nine out of the 10 countries on the list are African, where millions are displaced, exposed to violence, famine, disease, and dispossession. Burkina Faso has topped the list for the second year in a row, followed by Cameroon, DRC, Mali, Niger, Honduras, South Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, and Sudan. Topping the grim ranking of the worst-affected countries is the junta-ruled Burkina Faso that has been grappling with a jihadi insurgency for years, leading to more than 8,000 people being killed in 2023 and around 2 million internally displaced people, most of them cut off from aid.

“The utter neglect of displaced people has become the new normal,” said NRC’s secretary-general, Jan Egeland, in a statement on the report. “The local political and military elites disregard the suffering they cause, and the world is neither shocked nor compelled to act by stories of desperation and record-breaking statistics.”

Coming in the second-place spot is Cameroon that has seen a spiraling violence centered around the Francophone government’s suppression of Anglophone protests against marginalization, killing more than 6,000 people mostly in the English-speaking regions.

Meanwhile, the DRC is currently facing one of the most substantial displacement crises globally, with approximately 6.9 million people displaced throughout the country, according to International Rescue Committee.