Mali

The African members of the U.N. Security Council urged their counterparts on Tuesday to support sanctions imposed this week on Mali’s coup leaders by a bloc of West African nations.

A decade after civil conflict erupted in Mali, hopes for an early resolution to insurgency and strife have not materialized, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the country, El-Ghassim Wane, told the Security Council on Tuesday.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced today the appointment of Daniela Kroslak of Germany as his new Deputy Special Representative for the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).

The Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, has been pushing Mali's military government to allow elections by February.

In Mali, a coalition of political parties has rejected the military government's plan for a five-year transition before elections. Mali has been under pressure from West African governments to hold elections since a May military coup d’etat, the second in less than a year.

[…] I am deeply concerned about the continued deterioration of the security situation in Mali, characterized by increasing attacks targeting civilians and peacekeepers in the centre and north of the country and the expansion of the terrorist threat in the south.

West African regional bloc ECOWAS hopes Mali's transitional authorities will finalise a date for elections before the end of this year, its envoy, former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, said on Tuesday after meeting interim leaders.

Mali's foreign affairs ministry said that Chad planned to deploy 1,000 additional soldiers to Mali to reinforce its troops battling insurgents there, as France scales back its military presence in Africa's Sahel Region.

Two days after the European Union joined the United States in imposing sanctions on the Wagner Group, Blinken voiced disappointment that Mali has rejected an offer of additional UN peacekeepers and is instead looking to the private paramilitary unit.

More than eight years after then French president, François Hollande, formally declared the start of France's military intervention to root out jihadist insurgents from northern Mali, French troops were handing over a key base in Timbuktu to the Malian military.