Mali

The Council today adopted an assistance measure under the European Peace Facility worth €4.7 million to support the Nigerien Armed Forces with military equipment designed to deliver lethal force in full respect of relevant international law.

Campaigning for Mali's referendum on long-delayed changes to its constitution kicked off on Friday, ahead of the vote on 18 June. The country's military rulers say the new constitution has been drafted with the input of ordinary citizens, but some observers fear it will concentrate power in the hands of the president. 

Several thousand demonstrators gathered in the country’s capital of Bamako on Thursday, demanding an end to a United Nations peacekeeping mission that they say has failed to bring peace. … The M5-RFP, the party of the transitional Prime Minister Choguel Maiga and civil society organisations supporting the transitional military government, organised the rally.

Russia’s Wagner mercenary force has attempted to hide efforts to obtain military equipment internationally for use in the war in Ukraine and is seeking to transit such supplies through Mali, the United States State Department said.

The security situation in the Sahel remains very worrying and the spiralling crisis in Sudan is an additional source of concern, a senior UN official warned the Security Council on Tuesday.

There are “strong indications” that more than 500 people were killed – the vast majority summarily executed – by Malian troops and foreign military personnel during a five-day operation in the village of Moura in central Mali in March 2022.

A number of political associations in Mali have joined forces to oppose the military government’s decision to hold a referendum on a new constitution on June 18. The referendum, announced on Friday, is a milestone on the country’s path towards elections promised for February after a coup three years earlier. The referendum had been previously scheduled for March 19 but was postponed.

Seven United Nations peacekeepers were wounded in central Mali on Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded under their convoy, the UN force in the West African country (MINUSMA) said.

The German government said on Wednesday it had decided to end its participation in the UN mission in Mali by next May over problems with the ruling junta. Chancellor Olaf Scholz‘s cabinet said Berlin would pull its 1,110 troops in the UN mission MINUSMA out of the West African country over the next year and pivot towards more humanitarian and development aid for the region.

Mali’s army on Monday said it had arrested “12 terrorists” in the troubled northeast, where militants affiliated with the Islamic State group have widened their control, but Tuareg ex-rebels claimed the fighters were theirs.