Rights abuses 'drive people towards extremism'

Human rights abuses committed by security forces and economic deprivation are among the most important drivers of recruitment to extremist groups in Africa.

- Jason Burke

Researchers working for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) interviewed more than 1,000 active or recent militants across eight countries in Africa in a pioneering study.

Their report – Journey to Extremism in Africa: Pathways to Recruitment and Disengagement – is one of the biggest anywhere on the motivations of militants. It comes against a background of increasing extremist violence across a swathe of the continent.

Though deaths worldwide from terrorism have declined over the past five years, attacks in sub-Saharan Africa have more than doubled since 2016, and in 2021 they comprised almost half of the global total.

The Sahel region has been particularly badly hit, with Islamic militancy fuelling acute political instability, but violent extremism has also spread or worsened in other parts of the continent, such as Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.