Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDP)

Broad area of activity

Nationwide, concentrated where the insurgency is heaviest — the Sahel, Nord, Centre-Nord and Est regions. Placement follows the army units the volunteers are attached to; no unit locations are published here.

Notable history

Created by law on 21 January 2020, after a mass-casualty JNIM attack, to mobilise, train and arm civilians to defend their own communities. ACLED recorded roughly 28,000 active volunteers by 2022; a recruitment drive in October and November 2022 targeted 50,000 and drew about 90,000 sign-ups — a figure that measures applications rather than deployed strength. Under Captain Ibrahim Traoré from September 2022 the force became central to a declared "total war", moving from auxiliary tasks into direct combat, including coordinated air and ground operations. ACLED counts more than a thousand armed engagements involving the VDP since its creation, with over 5,000 reported fatalities, and an average yearly increase in its activity of 82% between 2020 and 2023. The institution is now being enlarged again. On 24 April 2026 the Council of Ministers adopted a draft law creating a 100,000-strong military reserve by the end of 2026, presented by Defence Minister Célestin Simporé as embedding "patriotic defence within a logic of citizen participation"; the armed forces launched recruitment competitions for about 12,000 personnel two days earlier; and on 1 June 2026 the BVDP announced the recruitment of 5,000 volunteers for integration into the armed forces.

Strengths

Local knowledge and presence in places the army cannot garrison; very large mobilisable numbers at low cost; a legal framework that makes the mobilisation an instrument of state policy rather than an informal militia.

Limitations

Two to three weeks of training against an experienced insurgency. Recruitment has largely favoured sedentary communities and excluded Fulani and pastoralist populations, which has sharpened the ethnic fault line the insurgency recruits along — and the documented abuses run the same way. Reported conduct includes extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, looting and sexual violence, disproportionately against Fulani communities; ACLED counted roughly 80 VDP attacks on civilians in Traoré's first fifteen months against about 60 across Kaboré's two-year tenure. Human Rights Watch, assessing the 2026 reserve expansion, said it risks multiplying harms it has already documented, questioned whether training at that scale and speed can produce a rights-respecting force, noted that the government has suspended civil society organisations providing human-rights training, and warned that arming civilians blurs the line between combatants and non-combatants and makes host communities targets. Those are that organisation's assessments, recorded as its findings.

Related organisations

• Burkina Faso Armed Forces Institutionally linked to · as of 2026-08 · high confidence

  Auxiliary rather than integrated: VDP units serve under the command of the army, police or gendarmerie unit nearest them. From 2026 a stream of volunteers is being recruited directly into the armed forces, which blurs a distinction the 2020 law drew clearly.

Lineage & institutional history

Formed 2020-01-21

Created by law on 21 January 2020 under President Roch Kaboré. Volunteers receive two to three weeks of training at regional garrisons or the National Patriotic Watch Brigade centre, then serve under the command of the nearby military, police or gendarmerie unit. The Brigade des Volontaires pour la Défense de la Patrie (BVDP) is the training and command structure for the force, not an alternative name for it.