(Reuters) -Burkina Faso has declared United Nations regional coordinator Carol Flore-Smereczniak persona non grata over a U.N. report alleging violations against children in the West African country, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
Burkinabe authorities were neither involved in the preparation of the U.N. report, titled “Children and Armed Conflict in Burkina Faso”, nor informed of the study’s conclusions before publication, he said in a statement.
The government accused the United Nations of making baseless assertions and stating falsehoods in the report, without citing relevant investigations or court rulings.
There was no immediate response to requests for comment from U.N. officials in Geneva and New York.
Violence fuelled by a decade-long battle against Islamist militants linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State has worsened in Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries seized power in a series of coups from 2020 to 2023.
The U.N. has in the past condemned what it says have been killings, abuses and abductions of children in the Sahel regional conflict as well as the recruitment of child soldiers.
(Writing by Anait Miridzhanian in Dakar and Emma Farge in Geneva; editing by Hugh Lawson and Mark Heinrich)
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