In a friend’s house in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second-largest city, Maimuona* remembers the night her son was born. “There were gunshots and everyone was running,” she says. Jihadists attacked her village, sending everyone scattering into the bush and causing Maimouna to go into labour early. Seydou was born by the side of a sandy road. His nickname is “the lucky one”.
In the two years since, the family have not been able to return home, displaced by an insurgency that has been simmering since 2014, killing thousands and pushing more than 2 million – almost 10% of the population – from their homes. The situation has been described as the world’s most neglected crisis.
