“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.

Not only is the Sahel highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, but it is also one of the regions where climate change is most likely to undermine security and trigger violent conflict. Now more than ever, climate security risks must be effectively integrated into stabilisation and peace operations in order to achieve stability in the region.

The coronavirus pandemic has people throughout the world pondering how humankind should respond to a public health crisis. While individual countries are managing the crisis with varying degrees of success, we can all agree that the Covid-19 pandemic is commanding the international community’s attention. By contrast, it is much harder to get the world to care about the long-term public health crisis unfolding in the West African Sahel.

The Western Sahel region—a cluster of arid, low-income countries stretching from Senegal, on Africa’s Atlantic coast, inland to Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Chad—is home to the world’s most youthful populations. According to current UN Population Division estimates, about 57 percent of this six-country region’s population is 19 years old or younger. As security conditions deteriorate across the rural Sahel, governments in Europe and North Africa are taking notice of these countries’ demographic status—and for good reasons. Sustained population youthfulness (often called a “youth bulge”) contributes to low levels of educational attainment, joblessness and social immobility, and ultimately to rapid population growth, which tends to drive declines in per-capita availability of freshwater and other critical natural resources: factors that are associated with the risk of persistent violent conflict and represent powerful push factors for migration.

While dismayed Americans watched the “zero tolerance” policy of family separation unfolding at the Mexican border, across the Atlantic, another shocking migration crisis continues to fester. Behind the grueling headlines of drownings in the Mediterranean Sea, migrants run a gauntlet of abuse through the Sahara desert to reach the Libyan coast. Armed militias and terrorist organizations across the Sahel profit by smuggling people displaced by climate, population, and security crises. While European policymakers struggle to cope with arrivals, their containment approach consistently disregards the root causes that force people to take such unimaginable risks. The high value of these human commodities not only exposes vulnerable migrants to torture, extortion, and even enslavement, but also provides funds for terrorist groups intent on attacking the West.