The General Secretariat of National Defense, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as part of the ‘strategic support for security sector reform’ project, hosted Friday February 23, 2024 in Ouahigouya, a public conference on national security policy and the law relating to it with stakeholders from the Northern region.

The national security policy, adopted on March 10, 2023, and the related law, adopted on May 9, 2023, are so far unknown. In order to provide wide dissemination of these security standards and to allow better appropriation of the texts, the General Secretariat of National Defense in collaboration with the United Nations Program (UNDP), has started a series of regional conferences in all regions of the country.

That of the Northern region took place on February 23, 2024 in Ouahigouya. In front of actors from the four provinces of the region, the Secretary General of National Defense, Colonel Major Ousmane Traoré, explained the context of modification of the nationa
l security policy until the adoption of the relevant law.

According to him, it was at the end of the national security forum, held in 2017, that the development of the policy began.

‘Everything started from the observation that the security crisis is growing, so are crime and antisocial behavior and the army alone cannot resolve these problems. We decided to put the citizen at the center of national security,’ he added.

And to continue that its development was participatory, inclusive and endogenous.

The national security policy takes into account the fundamental values and the vision of the future desired by all in the sense that within the 30 years of implementation that Burkina Faso is prosperous. As for Law 06 adopted by the Transitional Legislative Assembly (ALT) in May 2023, it has four titles with 6 chapters and 70 articles.

For the governor of the Northern region, Issouf Ouédraogo, these standards represent a profound paradigm shift through the integration of the concept of human security which p
laces the citizen at the heart of the concerns of security governance.

‘And this new approach requires the citizen to be a responsible actor, a partner and a co-producer of security. Thus, the actors will work in synergy of action to fight against insecurity,’ he indicated.

Source: Burkina Information Agency