Security conditions in the Sahel are rapidly deteriorating. Since 2016, the region has witnessed a 16-fold increase in terrorist attacks. In Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, 10.5 million people are facing starvation, and with climate-related disasters increasing and intensifying in the region, food insecurity is projected to rise. Against this backdrop, rapid population growth is outpacing governments’ ability to provide access to basic services. These pressures have transformed the central Sahel into the epicenter of a forced displacement crisis, with dire long-term and global humanitarian consequences that reverberate well beyond the region’s borders.

The countries of the Western Sahel find themselves in the tightening grip of a set of mutually reinforcing crises. These include deepening seasonal food insecurity and surges of food-aid dependency, widening income inequalities, widespread childhood stunting, low levels of education attainment and pervasive unemployment, as well as acute political instability and a rapidly growing Islamist-led insurgency that has already displaced some 2.5 million people across the region. In our recent report, What Future for the Western Sahel? The Region’s Demography and Its Implications by 2045, (published by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security), we argue that, unless the Sahelian states focus on reversing the underlying conditions that sustain high fertility—the cause of a persistently youthful and rapidly growing population—they will likely not be able to resolve these crises in the foreseeable future.  

Globally, the demographic transition from high to low fertility and mortality has improved quality of life for billions of people over the past several decades. The average number of children born per woman worldwide decreased from nearly 5 in 1950 to 2.47 by 2020. Improvements in infant and child mortality boosted life expectancy at birth from a global average of 47 years in 1950 to over 72 years today. These gains in fertility and mortality were a result of rising incomes and significant investments and improvements in public health, education, and family planning access—18 months into a global pandemic, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that COVID-19 has disrupted these gains, slowing progress along the demographic transition for those countries in the earliest stages. This World Population Day is therefore an important opportunity to recommit to investments in health and education and resume our progress in improving lives for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

After enduring sexual violence in the DRC conflict, Steven Kighoma fled to Uganda where he became an activist with the NGO, Men of Hope Refugee Association, supporting male victims of conflict-related sexual violence. The experiences of male victims include rape, being forced to watch family members being raped, being beaten on the genitals, and enduring other kinds of abuse. Compounding their trauma, men who have suffered sexual violence in the region are often seen as not properly masculine and face homophobic violence and criminalization, regardless of their sexual orientation. In addition, they face exclusion from survivor support services which assume that only women face sexual violence.

The biggest challenge is “the ignorance of the government, the medical institutions, the community, not knowing a male victim of sexual violence exists,” says Kighoma. “There is a confusion when you talk about male victims of sexual violence. People confuse it with homosexuality.”

“The impacts of displacement present major challenges at every level of decision-making, but the opportunities for interventions that build resilience to climate change, foster social cohesion, and address gender and other disparities—well they’re also very real as well,” said Ambassador Mark Green, President, Director, and CEO of the Wilson Center, during his opening remarks at a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center and Population Institute to explore innovative approaches to addressing the underlying drivers of forced displacement in the Sahel.

Joyce Makasi, a young woman in Kambiti village, Kitui County, Kenya, went into labor with her second child one afternoon in December 2020. She had just enough money to hire a motorbike to take her to nearby Waita health center. At the facility, the clinical officer and nurse told her she would need a cesarean delivery. It wouldn’t be her first cesarean, but COVID-19 presented new obstacles.