Burkina Faso: Private Military and Security Companies

(asked on 12th December 2022) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential risk that Russian private military companies will be used to provide security at gold mining sites in Burkina Faso; and if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of the use of private military companies for this purpose on (a) corruption, (b) human rights, (c) democracy and (d) security in Burkina Faso.


Answered by
Andrew Mitchell Portrait
Andrew Mitchell
Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
This question was answered on 20th December 2022

The UK Government is monitoring reports of an agreement between Wagner Group and Burkina Faso, as well as Wagner's wider activities in Africa and regularly raise the risks of Wagner deployments with regional Heads of State. Wagner are directly connected to the Russian state, and are active in Ukraine, Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic. They are having a destabilising impact and are responsible for human rights abuses. We are working closely with international partners to counter the malign use of such proxies by Russia. We have designated the Wagner Group, and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, under the Russia Sanctions Regime.

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