“We are in the same boat, and we need to act and think together if we want solutions to be sustainable and relevant for communities” - Maïmouna Ba
On 12 March 2025, the International Gender Champions Secretariat, in partnership with the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Nations Office and other International Organisations in Geneva and the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH), hosted a dynamic roundtable discussion with Maïmouna Ba at Maison de la Paix in Geneva. Ba is a 2024 recipient of the UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award and founder of Femmes pour la dignité du Sahel, a group based in Burkina Faso which defends the right to education of women and children displaced across the Sahel.
The discussion focused on the need for collective action to provide coordinated access to education and skills training, bringing together senior leaders and members of the IGC network to hear directly from Ba’s experience in establishing her organisation and advocating for young people and women in the Sahel.
In her remarks, Ba highlighted the urgency of a coordinated response by civil society organisations, international organisations and member states to build a common agenda across the Sahel. She spoke powerfully about the advantages of diverse leadership, particularly by including youth, to leverage local engagement and community leadership for sustainable change and collective action. Ba also shared that her own organisation needed further support from allies in the international community to build capacity, highlighting that much of the current work was done on a voluntary basis. She emphasized that education was the key for empowering girls to grow into community leaders, and for women to gain the skills needed to establish businesses and cooperatives.
Ba stressed the importance of addressing the underfunded and forgotten crisis in Burkina Faso and the Sahel region, where insecurity, displacement, and limited access to basic resources such as education and healthcare continue to be widespread. She called on International Gender Champions to consider shifting their approaches towards funding local action and investing in capacity building. Her message was clear: local leaders are driving meaningful change in their communities. By sharing their platform, recognising local ownership, scaling up resources, and dismantling barriers to participation, international decision-makers can play an important role in helping these initiatives thrive.