Mali

The Council today appointed Ms. Birgitte Nygaard Markussen as the new European Union Special Representative (EUSR) for the Sahel region. She will take up her duties on 1 September 2026 for an initial mandate of 12 months, until 31 August 2027. She succeeds João Cravinho, who has served as the EUSR for the Sahel since November 2024.

At least 50 Malian soldiers were killed after a joint Malian army and Russia’s Africa Corps convoy was ambushed near Anefis in northern Mali. Tuareg separatists and al Qaeda linked fighters claimed responsibility as footage showed captured soldiers, destroyed military vehicles and bodies at the scene.

[…] DPO recently launched the lessons learned report “MINUSMA: A Peace That Was Not Enough,” which examines the decade-long deployment of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), which concluded its withdrawal in late 2023. The report identifies implications that extend beyond Mali and are directly relevant to the future of UN peacekeeping.

Insurgents attacked several towns in northern, central and southern Mali on Saturday, targeting army bases and a prison near the capital, Bamako. The assaults involved the Tuareg separatist group FLA, which seeks an independent Azawad state in northern Mali and JNIM, which aims to impose strict Islamic rule. The violence, along with attacks in April, reveals the huge security problem facing Mali’s military leaders, who staged coups in 2020 and 2021 promising to end what is now a more than decade-long uprising.

Since September 2025, Mali has been subjected to a strategy of asphyxiation aimed at cutting off essential supplies entering and circulating within the country. By intensifying offensives against fuel convoys in the south and west, JNIM is paralysing national commerce and trade. But this is extending beyond Malian borders, threatening regional economic activity.

Cluster bombs, banned under an international treaty, have been used for the first time by Mali’s army and its Russian allies in the country’s north, where jihadist groups, separatist movements and the army have been fighting for more than a decade.

The human rights situation in Mali is rapidly deteriorating following coordinated attacks by armed groups across the country, with civilians killed, displaced and cut off from food and aid, UN rights office OHCHR said on Tuesday.

Mali's military leader Gen Assimi Goïta has taken over as defence minister after the officer who previously held the post was killed in a wave of surprise attacks.

Russia said on Thursday its forces would remain in Mali and continue backing the country’s military rulers, rejecting demands from Tuareg separatists to withdraw after surprise attacks forced Russian troops out of a key northern town.

Mali's capital city Bamako - a major West African hub and home to more than three million people - is under a partial blockade by Islamist militants, days after the country's defence minister was assassinated there.