Mali

A court in Mali has sentenced 46 Ivorian troops whose detention in Mali sparked a diplomatic row between the two countries to 20 years in prison, the public prosecutor said Friday. Three women soldiers among the original group detained in July, and who were freed in early September, were sentenced to death in absentia.

A $1.5 million grant to the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA, announced on Tuesday, is designed to enable a more inclusive environment for women blue helmets serving in the country, while also improving living conditions. 

Secretary-General António Guterres “strongly condemns” an attack against a UN police patrol in northern Mali that claimed the lives of two Nigerian peacekeepers, according to his spokesperson.

German forces will stay in Mali until 2024 only if the junta allows them to operate freely and elections are held, Germany’s defense minister warned Bamako during a visit Thursday.

Stabilising fragile states to ward off transnational threats has become the mantra of the last decade. However, the lack of a common agreed-upon definition of what stabilisation truly means leads to a multitude of different interpretations and implementation strategies of such approach. I

The UK, Côte d’Ivoire and other nations plan to pull their troops out of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, clouding its future as it undergoes internal review. In this Q&A, Crisis Group experts discuss the mission’s challenges and scenarios for what could come next.

As the AU considers sending more troops to the region, a review of previous strategies is vital.

Mali's military junta acted unconcerned by the announced withdrawal of German troops from the country. But civil society is worried about yet another ally abandoning military aid for crisis-beset Mali.

Mali's junta announced on Monday a ban on the activities of NGOs funded or supported by France, including humanitarian groups, amid a worsening row between Paris and Bamako.

Without urgent investment in climate mitigation and adaptation, countries in the Sahel risk decades of armed conflict and displacement, exacerbated by rising temperatures, scarcity of resources and food insecurity, the UN has warned in a report published on Wednesday.