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http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88869
BURKINA FASO: Cross-border land conflict risks
OUAGADOUGOU, 20 April 2010 (IRIN) – Conflicts in Burkina Faso between herders and farmers threaten to spill into neighbouring countries as herders seek grazing pastures, according to the government.
“Competition for shrinking land will spur migration of herders and their cattle to neighbouring countries, which increases the risk for cross-border conflicts,” Tanga Guissou, the director of pastoralism in the Ministry of Livestock, told IRIN.
Sixty percent of herders from Burkina Faso’s central-south region now live in Ghana, according to Hassan Barry, the president of a livestock association in the province of Zoumwéogo.
“The problem has become serious,” director of agriculture Salam Kaboré from the southern province of Nahouri told IRIN. “In the past, there was the land for farmers and herders to carry out their activities side by side. Now, there is not enough space and [farmers from other regions] are on livestock grazing areas,” Kaboré said.
There were 29 cases of land damages caused by animals in 2009 in Nahouri. Despite authorities’ efforts to encourage farmers and herders to work together peacefully, there are still outbreaks of conflicts “here and there” said Kaboré.
In the south, 18 deaths have been recorded and an unknown number wounded in farmer-herder conflicts since 2007 in the provinces of Gogo, Perkoura, Zounwéogo and Poni.
The risk of conflict will increase in Burkina Faso and nearby countries with expected declines in agricultural production and animal fodder, according to the Livestock Ministry’s Guissou.
Burkina Faso and neighbouring desert countries had erratic 2009 rains that reduced their harvests by up to 30 percent.
Irrigation projects and land degradation that has scattered farmers in search of cultivable land have reduced pastoral land by three percent a year, according to the Livestock Ministry.
No land rights
Communities – mostly in the south – with no formal land rights have been pushed out by hydro-agricultural irrigation projects and migrants from other parts of the country that have formed sedentary farming communities, Guissou told IRIN. “Indigenous groups are often left to their own resources in this [development] process and there has been no systematic effort to involve them, which frustrates them and leads to conflicts.”
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