AU follows ECOWAS footsteps as it suspends Burkina Faso over Military coup

Listen to this Article Now Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The African Union has suspended Burkina Faso from all its activities following the January 24 coup that ousted President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré.

The bloc’s 15-member Peace and Security Council said in a Twitter post on Monday, “The Council decides (…) to suspend the participation of Burkina Faso in all activities of the AU until the effective restoration of constitutional order in the country,” announced in a tweet by the Peace and Security Council, in charge of conflicts and security issues within the AU.

The chair of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat had already condemned the coup.

This is the second suspension in one week following the Burkina Faso coup. ECOWAS was the first to place Burkina Faso on ice. A delegation of ECOWAS heads of diplomacy on Monday arrived in the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, for talks with members of the junta, which has been in power for a week.

Like its neighbors, Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso has been caught in a spiral of violence since 2015, attributed to jihadist movements affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group that has left at least 2,000 dead and 1.4 million displaced.

A jihadist insurgency that spread over Mali’s border has killed over 2,000 people and displaced 1.5 million since 2015.

Since 2019, attacks by mobile combat units targeted mostly rural zones in the north and east of the country, fueling displacements and intercommunal violence.

Some 2,000 people were killed, among the civilians and members of the armed forces.

Islamist militants now move freely across entire swaths of the countryand have forced inhabitants of some regions to conform to a strict version of Islamic law.

Meanwhile, the army’s continuing fight against the Islamists has depleted the country’s already meager resources.