Click to expand Image Guezouma Sanogo (L) and Boukari Ouoba. © Private Earlier in July 2025, Burkina Faso authorities released five journalists and a human rights activist who had been unlawfully conscripted into the military after criticizing the country’s military junta. While a positive development, their release is also a stark reminder of others still missing, some since 2024, with no hint as to their whereabouts.On March 24, 2024, authorities in the capital, Ouagadougou, detained Guezouma Sanogo, Boukari Ouoba, and Phil Roland Zongo, members of the country’s Journalists Association, and Luc Pagbelguem, a journalist at the private television station BF1, for denouncing the junta’s restrictions on freedom of expression. On April 2, a video circulated on social media showing Sanogo, Ouoba, and Pagbelguem in military uniforms, raising concerns they had been conscripted. Zongo’s conscription had not been made public until it was confirmed upon his release.On June 18, 2024, Kalifara Séré, a commentator on BF1 TV, was reported missing after a meeting with members of the Superior Council for Communication, Burkina Faso’s media regulator. They questioned Séré about a commentary in which he had expressed doubts about the authenticity of photographs showing the head of state. In October 2024 the authorities finally acknowledged he had been conscripted into military service, along with two other journalists, Serge Oulon and Adama Bayala. The whereabouts of Oulon and Bayala remain unknown.On November 29, 2023, men in civilian clothes claiming to be members of the national intelligence services abducted Lamine Ouattara, a member of the Burkinabè Movement for Human and Peoples’ Rights (Mouvement Burkinabè des Droits de l’Homme et des Peuples), from his home. People close to Ouattara confirmed that he was unlawfully conscripted.Human Rights Watch has documented that the junta has used a sweeping emergency law to conscript critics, journalists, human rights activists, and magistrates to silence them.Governments are empowered to conscript adult civilians for national defense, but conscription needs to be carried out in a manner that gives the potential conscript notice of the duration of military service and an adequate opportunity to contest being required to serve.Burkina Faso authorities should immediately release all those still unlawfully detained and stop using conscription to repress the media and critics.