Homes and barns were set fire to in January. Some people have since had to sleep out in the open, without any real means of subsistence.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
On their arrival in Pama, ICRC and Burkinabé Red Cross staff discuss the final preparations for the aid distribution.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
Families from the village of Tibadi arriving one by one to receive their rations.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
Some of the 1,700 displaced people who have received aid since the clashes between the Groumantché and Fulani communities.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
A young girl from Tibadi waiting for aid to be distributed.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
Local authorities and representatives of the two communities publicly thank the Red Cross teams.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
In their speeches, local authorities and community representatives urge pardon and a cooling of tensions between these two communities, who have lived together on the same territory for many years.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
Volunteers from the Burkinabé Red Cross identify beneficiaries who have already been registered and give them a ticket to collect the aid they are entitled to.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
More and more beneficiaries gather, waiting their turn in the shade of the few trees still surviving in this extremely arid region.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
To help it settle back home, each family receives essential items, notably cooking utensils, tarpaulins, mats, loincloths, mosquito nets, buckets, jerrycans, soap and other personal hygiene items.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
As stocks were destroyed, families also receive some food: enough millet, oil, beans, sugar and salt to meet their needs for an estimated two months or so.
CC BY-NC-ND / CICR / L. Doua
Pama, Kompienga province, Burkina Faso, February 2015.
This one-off aid distribution is designed to help herders gradually resume their traditional way of life. Very often, families returning home also have to rebuild their houses.
In Kompienga province in eastern Burkina Faso there are regular clashes between the communities living from agriculture (Groumantché and Mossi) and those who rely on herding (Fulani). Their disputes are mainly about land use.
In January 2015, clashes broke out between the Groumantché and Fulani communities for the second year in a row. The Fulani suffered serious losses in the conflict, with two people killed and several houses and barns burned down. Almost 2,000 herders fledas a result.
Following a needs assessment, on 28 February the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Burkinabé Red Cross Society began to distribute aid in three villages not far from Pama, the capital of Kompienga province.
The humanitarian operation also helped promote peaceful coexistence between the two communities, who share the scarce natural resources of this arid part of sub-Saharan Africa.
