Mali, crimes and horrors befall children: they are raped, mutilated, deprived of all rights, forced to fight in the best of hypotheses

ROME – A United Nations dossier leaves no room for interpretation: the number of abused or raped minors in Mali has increased alarmingly compared to previous years. Those are roughly the words used in a report of the United Nations Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict. The report covers the period from April 2020 to March 31, 2022. Violence is increasing throughout the country, the activity of armed groups is growing, and so are the horrors committed against children, sometimes victims of forced recruitment, other sometimes attacked even in those places that should be considered safe, such as schools and hospitals. In the reference period – highlights the dossier – there were 2095 serious violations of rights against 1473 children. Armed groups are responsible for most of these, and government forces for a smaller percentage. Naturally, these are low figures because the ability to collect information on the ground is limited by the total social and political insecurity that the country is experiencing and, in recent years, also by the restrictions caused by the pandemic.

The data. Over nine hundred boys and girls were recruited and used between April 2020 and March 2022, the report reads. More specifically: 754 males and 147 females aged between 4 and 17 years. The number of children killed and maimed has increased, mainly due to attacks by armed groups against civilians in villages and due to the presence of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and explosive remnants of war (ERW). “It is a growing trend to violate the rights of children in Mali” writes Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict. For the Gamba it is necessary not only to protect the little ones from armed groups, but also to develop projects to reintegrate them into society, which is the most important step in guaranteeing their safety and the possibility of a future without war.

Attacks on schools and hospitals. Two hundred and forty school and hospital structures have been targeted by armed groups in recent years, 216 more than in previous years. In March 2022, 1731 schools were closed throughout the country for safety reasons. Attacks on schools involve the destruction of school buildings and equipment, verbal and written threats against teachers and employees, risks of reprisals for students. In January, an unidentified armed group entered a school in the Timbuktu region during lessons. He forced children out of classrooms, burned all school supplies and threatened to destroy the school if it reopened. From 2020 onwards, many teachers from the central and northern regions of Mali have retired. The most ferocious attacks occurred in the regions of Timbuktu, Gao, Ségou and Mopti, where armed groups are demanding the closure of secular schools and the opening of Koranic ones.

Rape and sexual assault. At least fifty girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen have been victims of sexual violence, but even in this case the figure is low considering the difficulties of gathering information on the territory. Most of the violence is attributable to armed groups. In October 2021, during an assault on a village in the Gao region, eleven 13-year-old girls were kidnapped and forced to marry fighters. Just as in July 2020 a 15-year-old girl was kidnapped and forced to marry a member of an armed group.

The difficulties for humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian access is continually hampered across the country, but even more so in the central-northern regions due to attacks by armed groups in villages, where NGO workers are also targeted. Car thefts, threats against local and international personnel, kidnappings, injuries, murders: the repertoire of crimes against the humanitarian world includes everything. In 2020, an operator was killed in the Gao region during a car theft. Five others were injured in the same accident. In 2022, an international NGO had to suspend its activities in the Gao and Ménaka regions following the kidnapping of one of its employees. The limitations affecting NGOs and UN agencies cause further problems for local communities, which in this way are deprived of concrete aid both in terms of food and in terms of health care, which is already precarious in the country due to of hospital insecurity.