Armed conflicts in Mali

Use of Armed Drones

The use of armed drones by parties to Mali’s armed conflicts increased, with the Malian armed forces expanding remotely conducted strikes, notably in the Kidal region after territorial losses to the Front de Libération de l’Azawad (FLA). Several incidents engaged IHL rules on distinction and proportionality, including strikes that reportedly hit civilian objects and then civilians responding to initial explosions, and repeated attacks on busy weekly markets where no military objective was indicated. Civilian deaths, including children, and serious injuries were reported, while the FAMa characterized those killed as terrorists or fighters whereas local accounts identified civilians. Armed groups also acquired airstrike capabilities, with the FLA using drones in attacks and JNIM using them to drop IEDs.

Use of Landmines and other Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)

IEDs continued to pose a grave and persistent threat to civilians across Mali. Multiple incidents attributed to JNIM involved civilian vehicles and carts striking IEDs, causing repeated civilian deaths and injuries, including women, and raising serious concerns about the indiscriminate use of such weapons. Under IHL, the duty to take all feasible precautions requires measures to avoid or at least minimize incidental harm to civilians and civilian objects, and recurring civilian casualties suggest a failure to uphold this obligation. Mali remains bound to clear and destroy anti-personnel mines under the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, and is also party to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and its Protocol II and Amended Protocol II, the latter binding all parties to a NIAC.

In Mali, forced displacement in the context of the NIAC engages the prohibition on ordering civilians to leave unless required for their safety or by imperative military reasons. Orders attributed to JNIM to vacate villages were reported repeatedly. In one incident in March 2025, armed men said to be JNIM members ordered the population of Fatakara in the Timbuktu region to leave within a short deadline. When villagers had not departed, the village leader was captured and killed and his body left in the town, triggering the flight of hundreds of families to Goundam within days. With no hostilities reported in the village and no reasons provided for the evacuation order, the displacement is presented as violating the customary prohibition on forced displacement and as a possible war crime.

In September 2024, JNIM claimed responsibility for a coordinated attack in Bamako that targeted the Faladié national gendarmerie training school. The operation reportedly resulted in heavy casualties among gendarme trainees. The incident is presented as part of ongoing hostilities involving Mali and JNIM and engages the IHL rules governing attacks.

Attacks against Livestock

In central Mali, JNIM was reported to have targeted livestock and agricultural livelihoods, engaging customary IHL rules protecting civilian objects, and objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, and prohibiting pillage and wanton destruction. Between June and November 2024, JNIM fighters were described as looting large numbers of cattle from communities perceived as supporting the Dan Na Ambassagou militia, including in Tilé where hundreds of animals were stolen. Similar patterns were reported in Souleye in the Ségou region, where recurrent threats of attacks by armed groups reportedly made agriculture impossible for a third consecutive year, preventing ploughing ahead of the rainy season and fuelling fears of widespread food insecurity. The combined loss of property and livelihoods left communities in a state of acute vulnerability.

Attacks on Airport

In September 2024, JNIM claimed responsibility for an attack on Base Aérienne 101 within Modibo Keïta International Airport in Bamako. The assault reportedly struck the presidential pavilion and destroyed the presidential airplane, while also damaging an aircraft operated by the World Food Programme. The attack on the presidential aircraft was presented as not per se breaching IHL, given the Malian President’s role as commander in chief of the armed forces. However, the reported damage to a marked humanitarian plane raises concerns regarding compliance with IHL rules requiring that attacks comply with distinction and proportionality and with the duty to take feasible precautions in attack.

Under IHL, deprivation of liberty must not be arbitrary and must be carried out with fundamental legal safeguards. Detainees must be treated humanely, protected against violence, and granted access to medical care, with torture and other ill-treatment absolutely prohibited. Abductions, arrests and detentions have been attributed to FAMa, the Wagner Group, and JNIM, raising serious doubt as to compliance with these requirements. Allegations of abductions by unidentified armed men operating in areas controlled by JNIM likewise point to risks of deprivations of liberty not meeting the legal safeguards under IHL.

Hostage-Taking

Hostage-taking is prohibited under customary and treaty IHL and constitutes a war crime when civilians are abducted to compel a third party to do or abstain from doing an act as a condition for release. In Mali, abductions of civilians, including children, were reported in areas controlled by JNIM, even where attribution to a specific party was not always possible. Illustrative incidents include the abduction of six civilians in Safienso, apparently in retaliation for the arrest of an armed group member. In December 2024, JNIM claimed responsibility for abducting Khalif Amadou Hady Tall and demanded that he cease interacting with the Malian government, a coercive purpose consistent with hostage-taking under IHL.

Enforced disappearance, understood under IHL as secret detention or the failure to disclose the fate or whereabouts of persons deprived of liberty, is prohibited and violates the duty to register detainees and families’ right to know the fate of relatives. In Mali, abductions and detentions were attributed to FAMa, the Wagner Group, and JNIM, with allegations that some arrests were followed by a complete denial of information to relatives. One reported example concerns the arrest of civilian Peul men at a market by the Malian Army on 12 May 2025, after which families reportedly received no information on their whereabouts until the men’s bodies were found three days later. Such practices, if confirmed, align with enforced disappearance under IHL.

Conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence in Mali was described as severe, primarily affecting women and girls, with rape and related acts prohibited under IHL and potentially amounting to war crimes. Reports indicated that both State actors and armed groups perpetrated such violence, including as intimidation and to reward fighters, and possibly as part of broader strategies in areas controlled by or supportive of armed groups. Since 1 July 2024, over 15,000 incidents of gender-based violence were registered, with children increasingly reported as the victims of rape, sexual assault and forced marriage. Under-reporting was linked to trauma, stigma, fear of reprisals and limited services. In February 2025, FAMa and the Wagner Group were accused of assaults and rapes during operations in the Goundam area.

Children in Mali remained disproportionately affected by the armed conflict, despite IHL rules affording them special protection as civilians and specific guarantees of access to food, medical care, and education. Grave violations against children were widely recorded in 2024, affecting boys and girls, with some victims’ sex not identified. The prohibition under IHL on recruiting or using children under fifteen in hostilities, applicable to both State forces and non-State armed groups, was repeatedly breached and such conduct may amount to war crimes. Recruitment and use of children in combat persisted, largely attributed to non-State armed groups, with JNIM reported as a principal perpetrator among them.