The United Nations has issued a stark warning that terrorist and other non-state armed groups are rapidly extending their reach across West Africa and the Sahel, destabilising already fragile states and pushing violence toward the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea.
In a briefing to the UN Security Council, Leonardo Santos Simão, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for West Africa and the Sahel, said the security landscape is deteriorating in the central Sahel and northern Nigeria, where long-running insurgencies are mutating and spreading.
According to Simão, armed groups are no longer confined to remote borderlands. They are probing deeper into Benin, Togo, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, exploiting porous frontiers, local grievances and weak state presence. He warned that these organisations are adapting quickly, deploying drones for reconnaissance, encrypted communications to evade surveillance and cryptocurrencies to move and launder funds beyond the reach of traditional banking oversight.
The UN envoy stressed that the region’s criminal economy is increasingly fused with extremist networks. Drug trafficking routes that once served primarily as corridors for cocaine and other narcotics are now financing insurgent operations, buying weapons and recruiting fighters. This convergence of terrorism, organised crime and illicit finance, he said, is making the threat more resilient and harder to disrupt.
Humanitarian conditions are worsening in parallel. Millions have been displaced across Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and neighbouring states, while aid agencies struggle to reach communities cut off by insecurity, roadblocks and bureaucratic restrictions. Women and children are disproportionately affected, facing forced displacement, sexual violence and the collapse of basic services. Attacks on schools and teachers have emptied classrooms in many rural areas, jeopardising an entire generation’s access to education.
Security Council members underscored that military responses alone cannot resolve the crisis. They called for deeper regional cooperation and political dialogue to address root causes such as chronic poverty, marginalisation, corruption and the impact of climate change on livelihoods, particularly in the arid Sahelian belt where competition over land and water is intensifying.
Burkina Faso’s ambassador, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Sahel States, insisted that governments in the region remain determined to confront the threat while pursuing political solutions. He said the alliance is open to dialogue and welcomed mediation and support from Togo, the African Union and the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel.
The UN maintains that lasting stability will require sustained international engagement, from bolstering overstretched security forces and governance reforms to scaling up humanitarian aid and long-term development investments that can undercut the appeal of armed groups.
