ABIDJAN: Burkina Faso’s ruling military leader on Friday dismissed the country’s prime minister and dissolved the government, according to a presidential decree transmitted to AFP.
The sacked premier had served at the head of three successive governments, surviving each reshuffle.
No reason was given for the dismissal of Apollinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tambela, who was named as premier in October 2022 after the coup that brought Captain Ibrahim Traore to power.
“The prime minister’s official functions are terminated,” said the decree, adding that members of the dissolved government would “carry out ongoing business until the formation of a new government.”
The west African country was plunged into instability by a January 2022 coup in which Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba seized power.
Little more than eight months later, Damiba himself was overthrown by Traore, 36, who now heads the junta regime.
Damiba, who ousted elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore, is currently in exile in neighboring Togo.
The junta has made the return of national sovereignty one of its priorities and regularly hits out against Western powers.
Burkina Faso has allied with fellow Sahel nations Mali and Niger, which are also led by military juntas following a string of coups since 2020.
The three nations joined together last September under the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), after severing ties with former colonial ruler France and pivoting toward Russia.
Burkina Faso was a French colony for the first half of the 20th century, and relations have soured with Paris following the 2022 coup.
Foreign Minister Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore last month said Burkina Faso’s cooperation with Russia “better suited” his country than its historic ties with France.
Along with Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso announced in January they were turning their backs on the Economic Community of West African States – ECOWAS – an organization they accused of being manipulated by Paris.
The three neighbors are all battling jihadist violence that erupted in northern Mali in 2012 and spread to Niger and Burkina Faso in 2015.
In Burkina Faso, about two million people have been forced to flee their homes by the conflict, which has killed more than 26,000 people since 2015, including soldiers and civilians, according to monitoring group ACLED.
Moscow has sent military instructors there – as well as to several other African countries – to help in the fight against Islamist violence.
Burkina Faso junta chief dissolves government
https://arab.news/5fn5y
Burkina Faso junta chief dissolves government
- Apollinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tambela had served at the head of three successive governments, surviving each reshuffle
- No reason was given for his dismissal, who was named as premier in October 2022 after the coup
UN slams world’s ‘apathy’ in launching aid appeal for 2026
- ‘Prioritized’ plan to raise at least $23 billion to help 87 million people in the world’s most dangerous places such as Gaza and Ukraine
UNITED NATIONS, United States: The United Nations on Monday hit out at global “apathy” over widespread suffering as it launched its 2026 appeal for humanitarian assistance, which is limited in scope as aid operations confront major funding cuts.
“This is a time of brutality, impunity and indifference,” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told reporters, condemning “the ferocity and the intensity of the killing, the complete disregard for international law, horrific levels of sexual violence” he had seen on the ground in 2025.
“This is a time when the rules are in retreat, when the scaffolding of coexistence is under sustained attack, when our survival antennae have been numbed by distraction and corroded by apathy,” he said.
He said it was also a time “when politicians boast of cutting aid,” as he unveiled a streamlined plan to raise at least $23 billion to help 87 million people in the world’s most dangerous places such as Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti and Myanmar.
The United Nations would like to ultimately raise $33 billion to help 135 million people in 2026 — but is painfully aware that its overall goal may be difficult to reach, given US President Donald Trump’s slashing of foreign aid.
Fletcher said the “highly prioritized appeal” was “based on excruciating life-and-death choices,” adding that he hoped Washington would see the choices made, and the reforms undertaken to improve aid efficiency, and choose to “renew that commitment” to help.
The world body estimates that 240 million people in conflict zones, suffering from epidemics, or victims of natural disasters and climate change are in need of emergency aid.
‘Lowest in a decade’
In 2025, the UN’s appeal for more than $45 billion was only funded to the $12 billion mark — the lowest in a decade, the world body said.
That only allowed it to help 98 million people, 25 million fewer than the year before.
According to UN data, the United States remains the top humanitarian aid donor in the world, but that amount fell dramatically in 2025 to $2.7 billion, down from $11 billion in 2024.
Atop the list of priorities for 2026 are Gaza and the West Bank.
The UN is asking for $4.1 billion for the occupied Palestinian territories, in order to provide assistance to three million people.
Another country with urgent need is Sudan, where deadly conflict has displaced millions: the UN is hoping to collect $2.9 billion to help 20 million people.
In Tawila, where residents of Sudan’s western city of El-Fasher fled ethnically targeted violence, Fletcher said he met a young mother who saw her husband and child murdered.
She fled, with the malnourished baby of her slain neighbors along what he called “the most dangerous road in the world” to Tawila.
Men “attacked her, raped her, broke her leg, and yet something kept her going through the horror and the brutality,” he said.
“Does anyone, wherever you come from, whatever you believe, however you vote, not think that we should be there for her?”
The United Nations will ask member states top open their government coffers over the next 87 days — one day for each million people who need assistance.
And if the UN comes up short, Fletcher predicts it will widen the campaign, appealing to civil society, the corporate world and everyday people who he says are drowning in disinformation suggesting their tax dollars are all going abroad.
“We’re asking for only just over one percent of what the world is spending on arms and defense right now,” Fletcher said.
“I’m not asking people to choose between a hospital in Brooklyn and a hospital in Kandahar — I’m asking the world to spend less on defense and more on humanitarian support.”
