Burkina Faso will organize “national assemblies” on October 14 and 15 to install a transitional president until elections are held in the African country, which has suffered two coups in eight months.
The announcement was made by Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who seized power on September 30 by overthrowing the government established after a military coup in January.
Traoré, appointed interim president of Burkina Faso last Wednesday (5), had said he would take care of the government’s tasks until the designation of a transitional president.
The assemblies will bring together representatives of the country’s political, social and civil society forces.
In January, the nation of the Sahel, a region marked by violence involving jihadist movements, witnessed the overthrow of President Roch Kaboré in a military coup. In his place, Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba took over, a figure hitherto little known, but with experience in combating terrorism.
Traoré said he was deposing Damiba due to what he described as an inability to deal with the escalating terrorist insurgency.
In the first six months of this year alone, according to monitoring by the American NGO Location of Armed Conflicts, groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State carried out more than 400 attacks in ten regions of Burkina Faso. As a direct result of the violence, nearly 2 million people —10% of the population— were displaced by the conflict, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.
The January coup was condemned by the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States and received criticism from UN Secretary-General António Guterres. But other forums, such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, have taken a lenient stance — in part because of Russia’s role.
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