The Sahel at a Crossroads: Mapping the Intersecting Risks of Fragility, Conflict and Resilience

Written by Elisa Garbil – 10.11.2025

---

Across the dry savannahs that stretch from Mauritania to Chad, the Sahel stands as one of the world’s most fragile regions. A place where political instability, violent extremism, displacement, and climate stress are converging into a perfect storm. Once viewed mainly as a buffer between North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahel is now the frontline of a complex crisis that defies easy solutions. Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, the three countries at the epicentre of the crisis, have experienced successive coups, expanding jihadist insurgencies, mass displacement, and humanitarian collapse.

The international community, through entities such as the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS) and the European Union, continues to pursue stabilisation efforts. Yet, the risks facing the region have multiplied and deepened. Each layer, security, humanitarian, governance, environmental, and gender, feeds into the others, creating a web of fragility that traps millions in uncertainty. Listen to Dr. Jessica Moody‘s episode to find out more!

The Expanding Shadow of Insecurity

The security landscape of the Sahel is increasingly defined by volatility and fragmentation. According to the UNOWAS report to the Security Council in mid-2025, the scale and sophistication of attacks by armed groups have surged, with militants deploying drones, encrypted communications, and transnational smuggling networks. Across Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, state control is eroding. Vast areas now fall under the influence of non-state actors who levy taxes, enforce their own justice systems, and recruit among local communities who feel abandoned by their governments.

In Mali, the presence of private military companies, particularly the Wagner Group, has further complicated the picture. As the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime notes, Wagner’s operations blurred the line between state-sanctioned and non-state violence, with evidence of weapons diverted from national arsenals to private contractors. Such practices undermine arms control frameworks and erode public trust in both domestic and international security guarantees.

This militarised environment coincides with political stagnation. Mali’s transitional authorities, for instance, have extended military rule and delayed elections, citing security concerns. Niger’s junta has taken similar steps. These decisions, while presented as pragmatic, deepen perceptions of illegitimacy and disconnect between rulers and citizens.

The result is a dangerous equilibrium: weak states fighting powerful insurgencies while leaning on opaque external forces for support. Civilians, caught between jihadists, private contractors, and national armies, suffer the most. The humanitarian toll continues to rise, leading to a feeling of resentment that extremist groups exploit for recruitment.

UNOWAS estimates that nearly 29 million people now need lifesaving assistance across the region, yet humanitarian appeals remain woefully underfunded. The inability to restore security has created a feedback loop, one where insecurity drives displacement, displacement fuels grievances, and grievances reinforce insecurity.

Displacement and the Humanitarian Spiral

As conflict spreads, the Sahel faces one of the fastest-growing displacement crises on earth. The United Nations and Al Jazeera recently reported that around four million people have been forced from their homes across the region. An astonishing figure that has doubled within five years… Most are internally displaced, while others have crossed porous borders into already overburdened neighbours.

The causes of displacement are deeply intertwined. Violence and fear drive people from villages, climate shocks destroy crops and pastures, and hunger and unemployment force families to move in search of survival. The World Food Programme warns that more than 50 million people in West and Central Africa, a majority of them in the Sahel belt, could face acute food insecurity during the 2025 lean season.

Yet the world’s attention, and funding, are lagging far behind. The UN’s humanitarian appeal for the region in 2025 received less than ten per cent of the required amount by mid-year. The result is visible in understocked relief warehouses, reduced rations, and halted nutrition programmes.

Displacement also reshapes societies in quieter, more corrosive ways. Entire generations of children have lost access to education. Families are divided. Communities that once relied on shared land and local mediation find themselves fractured and resentful. Host populations, struggling under economic strain, sometimes clash with newcomers, fuelling the tensions that militant groups in turn exploit.

Therefore, the human face of this crisis reveals the deeper risk. One where a protracted humanitarian emergency that undermines social cohesion, erodes trust in institutions, and traps millions in cycles of dependency. As long as displacement continues to grow faster than humanitarian response, the Sahel will struggle to move beyond survival.

Governance Under Strain

Governance failures are at the heart of the Sahel’s fragility. The Security Council Report’s August 2025 forecast highlighted how successive coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have consolidated military rule and delayed transitions to democracy. These regimes, operating under the banner of stability, have increasingly curtailed civic freedoms.

Amnesty International’s 2025 campaign, Silence and Repression: The New Face of the Sahel, paints a bleak picture. Journalists, human rights defenders, and community activists face arrest, intimidation, or disappearance. Governments cite national security to justify sweeping restrictions, but the effect has been to hollow out civic space.

This climate of repression corrodes the very legitimacy that authorities claim to protect. When citizens lose the ability to express grievances peacefully, or to hold leaders accountable, the space for violent alternatives widens. The governance risk thus becomes a multiplier, intensifying every other form of instability.

Moreover, weak institutions are struggling to manage resources, deliver services, or regulate security forces. The diversion of arms to private contractors, as documented by the Global Initiative, exposes how fragile oversight mechanisms have become. Corruption and opacity further alienate local communities, many of whom turn to traditional leaders or armed groups for justice and protection.

The risk here is cyclical: weak governance leads to insecurity and repression, which in turn weaken governance further. Without credible elections, accountability, and institutional reform, the region’s political systems risk entrenching authoritarianism rather than overcoming fragility.

Climate Stress and the Battle for Resources

Beyond conflict and politics, the Sahel faces an existential environmental crisis. The region’s semi-arid landscape is among the most climate-vulnerable on the planet. Rainfall is erratic, temperatures are rising faster than the global average, and droughts and floods are becoming more frequent.

The United Nations has warned that these shocks are intensifying competition over scarce natural resources, particularly water, pasture, and arable land. Farmers and herders, once able to coexist through seasonal migration patterns, are now clashing more often as grazing routes disappear and soils degrade. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) reported in August 2025 that parts of southern Mali and northern Senegal experienced rainfall deficits and dry spells, worsening food insecurity.

Environmental degradation is therefore both a driver and a consequence of conflict. As livelihoods collapse, young men with no economic prospects become easier targets for recruitment by armed groups. Displacement from drought-stricken areas adds pressure to already fragile regions.

The risk is not only a humanitarian but a systemic one. Climate stress undermines governance capacity, accelerates migration, and fuels grievances that militants can exploit. While international programmes such as the UNDP’s Sahel Resilience Project aim to strengthen community adaptation, such initiatives face chronic funding shortages and political obstacles.

The Sahel’s future may ultimately hinge on its ability to adapt to a harsher climate, not only through technical solutions like irrigation or reforestation, but through governance that equitably manages resources and resolves disputes before they turn violent.

Women on the Frontlines of Crisis

Nowhere are the intersecting risks of the Sahel felt more acutely than among women and girls. In a powerful address in August 2025, UN Women’s Executive Director urged the world to “stand with the women of the Sahel, not out of charity but in recognition of their power to shape a better future”. Her words reflected both urgency and hope.

Women and girls have borne the brunt of the region’s overlapping crises. Food insecurity, displacement, and the collapse of services have heightened their vulnerability. Gender-based violence has surged in conflict zones: abduction and forced marriage have become tactics of war rather than by-products. With schools closed or unsafe, millions of girls are now out of education, stripping them of opportunities and leaving them more exposed to exploitation.

UN Women and humanitarian actors have also warned of the ‘erasure’ of women’s voices in governance. As militarisation deepens, decision-making spaces have narrowed, excluding those most affected by conflict. Yet evidence from local peacebuilding efforts suggests that when women are included, as mediators, organisers, and negotiators, communities are more resilient and peace agreements more durable.

The gender dimension is therefore not peripheral. It is central to the region’s risk equation. Societies that exclude half their population from recovery and governance will struggle to rebuild. Conversely, empowering women and girls can have a stabilising ripple effect across security, livelihoods, and governance.

To unlock that potential, funding must reach women-led organisations, education must be prioritised, and protection from gender-based violence must be integral to humanitarian and development strategies. Without these, the Sahel’s future will remain defined by loss rather than resilience.

The Web of Interconnected Risks

What makes the Sahel’s crisis particularly intractable is how tightly these risks are interwoven. Insecurity fuels displacement → displacement strains governance → poor governance worsens resource management → environmental shocks deepen poverty → and poverty in turn drives recruitment into armed groups. Each element reinforces the others.

The erosion of civic space, documented by Amnesty International, diminishes accountability and silences those who might challenge this cycle. Climate change accelerates migration, which feeds humanitarian needs and political tension. Gender inequality magnifies vulnerability and weakens recovery.

This interconnectedness means that no single intervention, military, humanitarian, or developmental, can succeed in isolation. Stabilising the Sahel requires a systems approach that addresses security and governance alongside social inclusion and climate resilience. It also requires patience. Decades of fragility cannot be reversed through short-term counterterrorism campaigns or sporadic aid surges. Risk reduction in such a context means tackling the underlying vulnerabilities: restoring trust, strengthening local governance, and ensuring that women and youth, which is by the way, the majority of the population, are part of decision-making.

Pathways Toward Resilience

Despite the grim outlook, the Sahel is not without hope. Across the region, communities are adapting in creative ways: farmers experimenting with drought-resistant crops, youth organisations promoting dialogue, women’s cooperatives reviving local economies. International actors, too, are recalibrating their strategies.

The European Union has emphasised integrated approaches that combine security assistance with governance reform and sustainable development. The UNDP’s resilience initiatives focus on empowering local institutions to withstand shocks rather than relying solely on external aid. The Red Cross and UNHCR are promoting community-led migration management and climate adaptation strategies. Still, these efforts face daunting headwinds. Humanitarian appeals are chronically underfunded, coordination among international partners remains uneven, and national governments often prioritise military solutions over long-term governance reform. 

Yet experience shows that resilience grows where people have agency, where communities participate in decisions affecting their lives, where women and youth are included, and where trust between state and citizen is rebuilt.

The risk-based logic of Sahel stabilisation thus points toward integration: linking humanitarian aid to development, aligning climate adaptation with peacebuilding, and grounding all efforts in human rights. Only by addressing risks as part of a connected system can the region hope to break the cycle of crisis.

A Region on the Edge

The Sahel today stands on the edge of transformation or tragedy. The trajectory is not inevitable, but it is perilously close to self-perpetuating collapse. Violent extremism continues to metastasise, humanitarian needs soar, climate pressures intensify, and political repression narrows the space for peaceful change. Not a great outlook in other words. 

The task ahead is immense. It requires renewed international engagement, but also a shift in mindset. One from crisis response to risk reduction, from short-term stabilisation to long-term resilience. It means recognising that security cannot come from the barrel of a gun alone, nor stability from repression. It means investing in people, in governance, in education, in women’s leadership, and in climate adaptation, as the true foundations of peace.

As UN Women’s leader reminded the Security Council, the women of the Sahel “are not victims to be pitied, but agents of change to be supported”. The same could be said of the region as a whole. Beneath the dust and despair lies resilience: in farmers who plant despite drought, teachers who reopen schools amid displacement, and local leaders who mediate conflicts even as violence looms.

The challenge is to turn that resilience into stability, not by ignoring risk, but by confronting it head-on, understanding its interconnections, and building from the ground up. For the Sahel, the choice is stark but clear, continued fragmentation and crisis, or a slow, deliberate journey toward a more resilient future.