From Education to Abduction: How Sahel’s Women Bear the Brunt of Armed Conflict?
In the Sahel in 2025, armed conflict has escalated and this conflict has direct implications on girls’ education. Insecurity in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Chad has caused disproportionate female students to be affected by school closure. There are more than one million out of school girls leaving many without permanent interruption to their education.
Schools, especially those in non-state armed group controlled areas, have been destroyed or repurposed and fear of violence has continued to keep students (particularly girls) out of classrooms. In Mali, the attendance of girls is only 43 percent as compared to 47 percent in boys. This educational disparity is small in numbers, but carried within it are social inequities. During crises, girls are more likely to remain at home either to do the household chores or to be married off, a decision that is usually made under coercion and intimidation.
Displacement Worsens Education Access
Physical insecurity is not the only obstacle to the Sahel internally displaced populations estimated to number almost 6 million by April 2025. Most of the camps have inadequate learning facilities and the scarcity of qualified teachers adds to the situation. For displaced girls, cultural stigmas further discourage school attendance. In other instances, families have to focus on the education of boys, since they have scarce resources or cultural practices.
Consequences Of Early Dropout
Early school drop-out girls seldom come back. They are not able to access education and thereby one important avenue of attaining independence, social mobility, and safeguarding against unhealthy practices. The dropout rate caused by insecurity leads to a chain of disempowerment where no one is provided with education, security and dignity.
Abductions Target Women As Tools Of Warfare
In parallel to the disruption of education, abduction has emerged as a calculated weapon used by armed factions in the Sahel. Women and girls are being kidnapped twice in Burkina Faso in the last 18 months. There are a variety of aims of such abductions: to intimidate populations, to recruit fighters by force of marrying, to get ransom or to gain political bargaining. The victims are usually physically and mentally abused over time.
Abductions are not a one time affair but an extension of a plan. The same trends have appeared in conflict zones of Niger and Mali. Absence of governance is used by armed groups to implement their authority and eliminate women in the society. This is not only witnessed in kidnappings but also the dress codes, curfews, and restrictions against women mobility.
Psychological Toll And Societal Impact
Psychological trauma that is experienced by abducted women ripples across the whole community. Survivors are also stigmatized on re-entry, which makes the suffering worse. Families also become destabilized, as they constantly have to deal with emotions of loss and also the social consequences of victimization of their daughters.
Daily Survival Tied To Insecurity And Violence
In addition to the dramatic cases regarding abduction, life of women in Sahel has also become more hazardous. Even the most routine activities like gathering firewood or water are no longer safe. Two-thirds of displaced women in the camps cite that they feel unsafe when performing these chores and complaints of sexual and gender-based violence have risen correspondingly.
Health outcomes remain dire. The Sahel has one of the highest maternal deaths in the world. This is partly because of early pregnancies mainly after being forcefully married and partly due to inaccessibility of reproductive healthcare. Mothers and infants are adversely affected by malnutrition, particularly when they have to stay long without a permanent place to reside.
Traditional Practices Persist Under Stress
Even in the face of conflict, patriarchal customs such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage continue. The incidence of FGM among women and girls in Mali is 90 percent and the practice is still common because of lack of effective legal mechanisms and enforcement. Such practices have remained unquestioned in the countryside because of the erosion of state presence.
Reduced Funding Threatens Protection Programs
Humanitarian aid to the Sahel is deteriorating sharply, despite the aggravated crisis. By May 2025 there was only 8 percent compliance with the appeal of humanitarian assistance required. This shortfall has forced numerous NGOs to scale back or close their women’s protection programs.
The global aid gap is attributed to a shift in international focus particularly toward the Middle East and Ukraine and a general fatigue among donors. Yet the consequences of neglect are disproportionately borne by women. Programs that provided shelter, counseling, or legal aid to survivors of gender-based violence now face extinction at a time when demand has never been greater.
Marginalization From Political Processes
Women’s exclusion from governance deepens the problem. In Mali, only two out of 36 members of the 2025 constitutional drafting committee were women. In Niger, women represented just 14% of institutional reform participants. The underrepresentation extends beyond symbolism—it limits the incorporation of gender-specific needs in peacebuilding and policy design.
Freedom of expression is also under pressure. The censorship in the media and suppression by the political leaders silences the voices, which could have highlighted and championed the rights of women, and leave most of the decision making in the hands of men.
Women’s Leadership Emerges From Crisis
But it is through these harsh realities that Sahelian women still provide very important roles in community sustainability. They are the first ones to respond in the event of social breakdown because they are frequently called upon to mediate local feuds and to even organize the distribution of aid. Where there are no formal structures, informal female leadership offers some form of stability and optimism.
Leadership by women in areas such as Mopti and Tillaberi have been the centre of attention through reconciliation, intelligence collection on the arising threats and provision of psychosocial services to the affected community. Their activities fill a gap in the fading institutions of the state and foreign disengagement.
Shaping The Future Through Inclusive Response
Political commentator Nyamisa Chela took this complexity up and said,
“Any sustainable solution to the Sahel crisis must centre women’s voices, rights, and leadership.”
The comments that Chela gives are indicative of a growing consensus held by regional analysts–that gender-inclusive strategies are not only desirable but necessary.
Attempts to solve the crises of the Sahel should not be limited to military and economic intervention. Remedies should incorporate protection frameworks that would take into consideration the gender-related risks, the representation of women in governance, and the re-investment in education in order to provide security against the instability in the long term.
The experiences of the realities that women endure in the Sahel undermine dominant paradigms of response to conflict. It raises a key fact: the security of women is not a peripheral matter–it is a test of whether peace is indeed being constructed.
