Insecurity in Mali and Niger accompanied by an erosion of basic services in the border regions is dragging neighboring Burkina Faso into "an unprecedented protection crisis," a UN spokesman said on Wednesday.

"Burkina Faso has become one of the fastest-growing displacement crises in Africa," said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. From January to October, the number of internally displaced persons in the country has increased from 87,000 to 486,000.

"Currently one-third of the country's population is affected by the crisis," Haq said.

Last week alone, some 7,000 people were displaced from one community in the eastern part of the country, he said. The United Nations and its humanitarian partners are supporting the response by providing emergency food to the displaced.

Next year, some 2.2 million people will require life-saving humanitarian assistance, nearly double the 1.2 million people in need at the start of 2019, the spokesman said.

Burkina Faso in western Africa has a population of nearly 20 million, according to a July 2019 population estimate by the United Nations.