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A new start in Ivory Coast for Burkinabe refugees fleeing jihadists

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OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT/AFP or licensors

UNCHR

Thousands have abandoned their homes, their crops and their belongings: driven out by deadly jihadist attacks, more than 6,000 people have left southern Burkina Faso in recent months, walking to Ivory Coast to find refuge and start again from nothing.

Near the border, at the edge of the village of Tougbo,  a dozen makeshift tents with corrugated iron roofs are scattered in the forest.

"What made us come here is the people who came to our area, we don't know them. They always move around, we are afraid. That's why we came the first time. There are people who have returned to our village. We followed them. We resumed our activities. But in the last few days they started to kill people. We got scared and ran away to come here." said a Burkinabe refugee

The more the months pass, the more difficult it becomes to feed .

Donations of food and soap from the government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees  are no longer sufficient as new arrivals increase almost every week.

But most of the refugee children do not go to school. Some 1.5 million people are internally displaced in a country of 21 million, estimates the national disaster management agency CONASUR