Mali 2020-2025 Mediation in Review: Key Events and Trends
Authors: Ava Byrne, Liora Berg, Emma Kavanaugh
Visualisations: Samvit Nagpal
Introduction
The Republic of Mali, a historic epicentre of cultural commerce dating back to the 13th century, gained independence in 1960 (Shahid, 2025, p. 115). The new state inherited a north-south division between geographic and ethnic groups, with the south containing around 90% of the population and the majority of industrialisation (Pézard and Shurkin, 2015, p. 8). The Tuareg minority, which was concentrated in northern Mali, had long sought greater autonomy. This tension came to a head in 2012 when Tuareg fighters returning from the collapse of Libya’s Gaddalfi regime declared independence from Mali and created the new Azawad state (de Waal and Berridge, 2026, p. 346). The Malian Armed Forces (FAMA) were poorly equipped and struggled to push back the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA); the slow reaction of the state to the rebellion led soldiers within FAMA to launch a coup d’état against the government (van der Lijn, 2019, p. 23). The Tuareg rebels ‘took advantage’ of this and formed what van der Lijn (2019, p. 23) terms a ‘pragmatic alliance’ with prominent Islamist armed groups, allowing them to rapidly expand their control in three northern regions: Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal (Shahid, 2025, p. 116). This marked the beginning of a violent and complex conflict that continues to affect Mali and the greater Sahel region.
Efforts to stabilise the country have involved a range of domestic and international actors, including the United Nations, regional organisations such as ECOWAS and the African Union, and France, the former coloniser of Mali (Boutellis, 2015, p. 4). Since 2021, alternative actors such as the Russian-linked Wagner Group have entered the conflict landscape, reshaping the nature and legitimacy of mediation efforts. The MEND research dataset reports on concrete mediation events from 2020 to 2025 (Peter et al., 2025), revealing a marked decline in mediation activity (see Figure 1) alongside significant restructuring of processes and actors. The following report complements the dataset with a deeper analysis of how Mali’s mediation environment has shifted from a multilateral liberal peace framework to a fragmented and increasingly sovereignty-centred order, driven by successive coups, the withdrawal of Western actors, ideological shifts, and the emergence of alternative external partnerships.
Layers in Conflict: How Coups Have Reconfigured the Malian Mediation Landscape
The succession of coups in Mali, particularly the 2020 coup d’état, marked a divisive turning point that disrupted ongoing mediation processes and reshaped the structure of conflict management. The MEND dataset illustrates how such events altered both the priorities and composition of mediation efforts, shifting attention away from long-term settlement towards immediate political crisis management. The end of 2020 saw a spike in mediation and mediation-related events (see Figure 2) driven by escalating protests against then-president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. Led by the M5-RFP (Movement-Rally of Patriotic Forces), these protests reflected deep dissatisfaction with corruption and worsening economic and humanitarian conditions. In August, this unrest culminated in a military coup in which Keïta was detained and subsequently forced to resign (Pichon, 2020, p.1).
These 2020 uprisings altered the composition of mediation actors. The MEND dataset for 2020 demonstrates a notable shift in the actor landscape, with regional actors entering the mediation space. Several regional actors entered the mediation space as a result of concerns that arose from the violence: ECOWAS dispatched delegations to Bamako and investigated the military’s conduct in light of protester deaths, while meetings were held with Ghana, Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire, as state concern heightened over unrest at or across their borders. While this surge in activity reflects the urgency of the moment, the 2020 coup fundamentally altered mediation’s focus; attention shifted away from long-term conflict resolution and towards containing immediate violence and managing political transition. As a result, mediation became increasingly reactive, prioritising short-term stability over sustained peace-building efforts. A clear example of this comes in conversations with Niger and the Ivory Coast, which focused on addressing security issues at the borders. This shift in priorities further undermined the already fragile implementation of the 2015 Algiers Accords (PA-X Peace Agreements Database, Agreement 1365 in Bell and Badanjak, 2019). With political leadership disrupted by the capture of Keïta and attention redirected towards the immediate crisis, Mali’s broader peace process was effectively put on hold, forcing mediators to restart negotiations from significantly altered conditions. Specifically, the start of the 2020 dataset recorded efforts such as conversations between Keïta and certain jihadist groups about lessening violence (RFI, 2020), perhaps signalling some optimism in the way of securing the region, though there was great doubt cast on his motivations and whether positives changes could be realistically expected—all of which led to the coup (Peter et al., 2025). The increased involvement of regional actors as a response to border disruption illustrates the individualised interests that have made mediation in Mali so challenging: parties engage not around a shared vision of peace but around their own security imperatives.
One of the most consequential outcomes of the 2020 coup was the emergence of new central figures in the mediation landscape. Most notably, Goodluck Jonathan (see Figure 3), the former Nigerian president appointed by ECOWAS as Special Envoy to Mali, became a key intermediary in managing the political transition. Alongside him, Colonel Assimi Goïta rose to power as interim vice-president following Keïta’s resignation (Bøås and Haavik, 2026), representing the new domestic authority with whom external mediators were required to engage. Together, these appointments illustrate how the coup reshaped both the internal and external architecture of mediation, introducing new actors and altering existing channels of negotiation. This reconfiguration would have lasting implications for the trajectory of mediation efforts in Mali, as explored in the following section.
Figure 3: Actor involvement in the Mali conflict for the year 2020, highlighting the role of Goodluck Jonathan. Source: Peter et al. (2025).
These effects to Mali’s mediation process show how abrupt political ruptures can fundamentally reshape mediation environments. Rather than simply interrupting peace processes, the coup reset them: displacing existing agreements, fragmenting the actor landscape, and redirecting attention towards immediate crisis management. In Mali, this resulted in a shift away from long-term, structured peace efforts, and laid the foundation for the broader decline of Western influence and liberal mediation.
The Breakdown of Liberal Mediation in Mali
The post-coup period marked not only a disruption of mediation processes but also a growing crisis of legitimacy for the actors involved. International responses to the 2020 coup revealed deep divisions, with widespread Western condemnation contrasting sharply with the domestic support for Keïta’s removal (Brooke-Holland, 2020, p. 3). At the same time, a substantial share of international engagement remained driven by security concerns over al-Qaeda linked jihadist groups (Brooke-Holland, 2020, p. 3), encouraging short-term, security-focused interventions rather than durable political reconfigurations. These dynamics contributed to a decline in the role of historically dominant Western actors, particularly the United Nations and France, setting the stage for the broader breakdown of liberal mediation frameworks in Mali.
MINUSMA in Mali ‘may well be the most complex mission the UN has ever done’ (Matthijssen, 2025, p. 15), reflecting the challenges of operating in what Cold-Ravnkilde and Jacobsen (2020) have termed the ‘security traffic jam’ of the Sahel region. Initially authorised to take over from the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA), the mission was deployed over a vast and volatile territory with limited resources and an expanding mandate, stretching the operational flexibility of the UN system (Matthijssen, 2025). Simultaneously, it faced the structural constraints of consent-based peace-keeping: host-state actors retained the ability to shape the agenda, while the mission’s reliance on state cooperation eroded public trust (Boutellis, 2015, p. 1; van der Lijn, 2019, p. 107). These limitations contributed to both worsening security conditions and the increasing militarisation of the mission itself (Cold-Ravnkilde and Jacobsen, 2020, p. 872). The dataset reflects this shift, showing a decline in mediation activity from 2020 onwards (see Figure 4) as MINUSMA is forced to prioritise military tasks over mediation and then is subsequently asked to withdraw. The mission’s close relationship with the Malian state, combined with limited capacity for independent verification (Sandor, 2020, p. 919), further contributed to declining public trust and a broader crisis of legitimacy. These issues of authority were compounded by MINUSMA’s close association with France. As the UN Security Council penholder, France ‘significantly shaped’ the mission’s mandates and actions (Gazeley, 2022, p. 270), reinforcing perceptions of partiality. This culminated in the derogatory label ‘MINUSMerde’ used by segments of the Malian population (Guichaoua, 2020, pp. 908-9), reflecting the growing sentiments of frustration and distrust.
French intervention in Mali became increasingly delegitimised, contributing to a broader rejection of Western security aid and mediation frameworks. Although initially invited by the Malian government under Operations Serval and Barkhane (Guichaoua, 2020, p. 898), the relationship began to deteriorate in 2019 and further collapsed following the 2020 coup. The transitional military government increasingly framed French involvement as incompatible with Malian sovereignty, culminating their direct request for the French to withdraw in February of 2022 (Mohamedou, 2024, pp. 17-8), following the imposition of sanctions against the military junta (Adu and Mezyaev, 2023). This request for French withdrawal was driven not only by political tensions, but also by longstanding perceptions. As the former colonial power, France’s involvement was widely viewed as self-interested and extractive (Weiss and Welz, 2014, p. 903). These perceptions were amplified by visible risk-averse practices, reliance on airpower, and limited engagement with local populations (Weiss and Welz, 2014, pp. 897, 901; Cold-Ravnkilde and Nissen, 2020, p. 944), thereby reinforcing the image of a distant and self-interested actor. As a result, French involvement failed to restore stability and increasingly undermined its own legitimacy. This contributed to growing public hostility, diplomatic breakdown, and ultimately their own expulsion.
Examined together, these developments illustrate the collapse of a model of liberal security aid premised on consent-based mediation, multilateral coordination, and externally supported peace processes. In Mali, governments have increasingly rejected external frameworks, particularly following the 2020 coup, instead prioritising sovereignty-centred security governance, and alternative partnerships to Western institutions. The MEND dataset captures this transition clearly: by 2025, only three mediation-related events are recorded (see Figure 1) but ACLED (2026) records 3943 fatalities, highlighting a context in which violence persists in the absence of mediation, rather than in opposition to it. This separation shows both that the end of the conflict is not in sight, and that structured mediation as a mechanism to manage it has come to an end.
Mali’s Turn Inward: Progressive Nationalism, Isolationism, and the Collapse of External Mediation
The Malian coups of 2020 and 2021 did not merely represent a shift from democratic rule and constitutional order but initiated a deliberate turn inwards and an ideological shift (Peter et al., 2025). Mali’s trajectory since the 2020 coup, which established a transitional military government, has since sought to nationalise security and governance, which has sidelined external mediation efforts. What began as a government seeking legitimacy amid regional pressure evolved into a consolidation of power that rejected multilateral frameworks, expelled foreign forces, and rejected deeply rooted post-colonial systems that had defined Mali’s relationship with France and the West. This shift cannot be understood without contextualising the enduring of Françafrique or the network of neo-colonial systems (security, monetary, and political) that have long shaped sovereignty in Francophone West Africa in tandem with our dataset on how mediation activity evolved and ultimately collapsed across this period.
Mali’s later turn towards Russia (see Figure 5) is often framed a result of a ‘vacuum’ left behind after Western withdrawals; however, this explanation neglects Malian agency and the political nature of the shift. For Russia, the benefits of getting involved in Mali include increased geopolitical influence and expanding the legitimacy of authoritarian governments (Mohamedou, 2024, pp. 15-6). For Mali, the reasoning reflects a combination of political, strategic, and ideological factors. Following the 2020 coup, Russia moved quickly to engage, normalising and accepting the junta government (Levine, 2025, p. 62). This sharply contrasted with the West’s conditionality surrounding democratic transition and human rights, which Malian authorities increasingly being regarded as intrusive (Matthijssen, 2025, p. 18). Simultaneously, anti-French and broader anti-Western sentiment has grown, fed by negative perceptions of France, and has created a receptive environment for Russia as a new partner (Mohamedou, 2024, p. 14). This shift was operationalised through the deployment of the Russian-linked Wagner Group (Jacobsen and Larsen, 2024, p. 2). Since 2021, Wagner has trained Malian local forces and protected resources and assets (Jemlak and Momoh, 2025, p. 543), illustrating the link between security and economic interests. Wagner’s economic model, linked to access to resource concessions, creates incentives that are misaligned with rapid conflict resolution (Levine, 2025, p. 63). Therefore, they focus on security assistance over mediation; this results in them only appearing 4 times in the mediation-focused dataset, with the majority of the appearances involving mixed humanitarian, economic, and security cooperation (Peter et al., 2025). The implications of Wagner involvement extend beyond the Malian conflict: mineral resources offer the opportunity to circumvent Western sanctions on their currency, thereby helping to finance the conflict in Ukraine (Pokalova, 2023).
This trajectory raises fundamental questions about the relationship between nationalist ideology, neo-colonial impacts on sovereignty, and human security. International relations scholars warn that external peacebuilding attempts, when misaligned with local realities, risk worsening violence, as seen in the Mali context. Simultaneously, the complete rejection of external mediation, in a context where local processes are under-resources and grassroots movements are suppressed creates its own form of violence (Jandev, 2024; Pigeaud and Sylla, 2024). Since 1960, when Mali gained its independence, French involvement in Mali has functioned not merely as a historical legacy but a neocolonial constraint on genuine Malian sovereignty. The existence of bilateral defence ties, CFA franc financial system, and condition security partnerships created what scholars collectively describe as an environment in which France’s continued influence complicated any external actors, neutral or impartial (Kohnert, 2022; Kirwin et al., 2022; Ramachandran, 2024). For Malian government and civilians alike, the coups offered an opportunity to reevaluate these arrangements. As relations with Paris deteriorated, this reassessment evolved into a broader ideological shift that framed the expulsion of Western actors as a reclaiming of sovereignty. Our dataset captures this through the quantification of mediation or mediation related events (see the interactive visualisation). In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 coup, mediation efforts were dense and multilateral: ECOWAS dispatched multiple delegations to Bamako, appointed Goodluck Jonathan, and held extraordinary summits to address the unfolding situation. However, even within this active phase, tensions were evident regarding the terms of external involvement. The transitional government asserted firm positions on issues such as territorial integrity, the exclusion of sharia law, and the protections of women’s rights, signalling their intentional to define the boundaries of negotiations domestically. Simultaneously, the rejection of ECOWAS proposals by the M5-RFP opposition movement further illustrated growing resistance to externally brokered solutions, even from regional actors.
By 2021 and into 2022, this resistance evolves into sustained institutional friction. The second coup in May 2021 prompted ECOWAS to suspend Mali, whilst continuing engagement through fact-finding missions and diplomatic initiatives. However, these efforts increasingly generated tensions rather than resolutions, as seen by the decline in number of events in 2021 (see Figure 4). In 2021, disagreements over the length of the transitional period and the unwillingness by the junta to commit to prompt elections intensified divisions between Bamako and external actors, including France and MINUSMA. Even mediation attempts by states such as Togo failed to break the deadlock, highlighting the declining effectiveness of multilateral engagement (Al Jazeera, 2022). This period also saw a notable shift in rhetoric, with Malian leadership openly criticising France and regional actors in international forums (Bertrand et al., 2023). Under Goïta’s leadership, Mali forged the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) with Niger and Burkina Faso (Bøås and Haavik, 2026), a confederation announced in 2023 to counter terrorism and build economic and defensive unity outside of ECOWAS (Ojewale, 2026). Despite the novelty of this alliance as a ‘genuine institutional departure’, Ojewale (2026) argues that the countries continue to face the same structural limitations that constrained MINUSMA and Mali’s actions, reflecting how the evolution of peace frameworks in Mali is constrained not only by external pressures but by ensuring structural and political factors in the state.
In combination, these developments illustrate the active displacement of external mediation. Though the shift began as resistance to externally imposed frameworks, it has evolved into a coherent project centred on sovereignty, with mediation characterised as an instrument of Western interference. In this context, the withdrawal of Western actors and Mali’s exit for ECOWAS have enabled the consolidation of an alternative security order grounded in bilateral partnerships and regime-focused cooperation. The growing prominence of actors such as Russia and the Wagner Group reflects this shift, prioritising resource security over negotiated settlements. As mediation activity collapses after 2023 (see Figure 1), violence persists under increasingly coercive and state-centred forms of security governance. Mali’s turn inwards therefore represents the alternative to liberal peacebuilding: a sovereignty driven security model in which stability is pursued though control rather than negotiation.
Conclusion
This report has shown that mediation data in Mali between 2020 and 2025 show significant changes in actors and ideologies, with the situation shifting away from a multilateral liberal peace framework towards a fragmented and increasingly sovereignty-centred order. Drawing on the MEND dataset (Peter et al., 2025), it demonstrates a sharp decline in mediation activity alongside persistently high levels of violence. Overall, this makes clear the breakdown of mediation as a governing mechanism for managing conflicts. Successive coups have been central to this transformation. As shown in the first section, the 2020 and 2021 coups restructured the mediation landscape by displacing Western actors, elevating regional engagement, and redirecting attention away from long-term settlement processes towards regime stability and crisis management. This undermined continuity in the peace efforts and accelerated the decline of established frameworks, such as the Algiers Accords process. At the same time, the withdrawal of France and MINUSMA reflects both operational limitations and a broader loss of legitimacy for liberal interventionist models. Their exit signals a shift away from mediation-centred approaches towards primarily security-based governance strategies, further evidenced by Mali’s turn towards alternative partnerships such as Russia and the Wagner Group.
Finally, Mali as a study illustrates how external mediation frameworks can erode when political legitimacy fractures internally. The result is not simply a reduction in mediation, but a reorganisation of conflict dynamics around sovereignty and security, with limited space remaining for structured negotiations.
Mali Visualisation
Visualisation User Guide
The above map is an interactive Tableau visualisation of mediation events in Mali. Each dot represents an individual event. The size of each dot is proportional to the number of mediators involved in each event. Hover on a specific dot to read more details in the tooltip. Use the checkboxes to select which years you would like to view. You can also understand the role of different third parties using the Contains Third Party filter. If the All checkbox is ticked, events containing any third parties (i.e., all the events) will be shown. If you wish to focus on a specific third party, select them from the dropdown menu. You can then choose to see events where the third party was involved by selecting the True checkbox, or events where they were not involved using the False checkbox. The two types of events are M (mediation) and MR (mediation related). Mediation events are “non-coercive facilitation of communication or negotiation between disputing parties to help them reach a mutually acceptable agreement or resolution to their conflict by an external third-party. Mediation always involves at least two (local) conflict stakeholders, at least one of them needing to be a belligerent“. Mediation-related events are “non-coercive measures to facilitate the mediation. These measures are aimed at (1) encouraging a conflict party or parties to come to/continue with the negotiation; (2) expanding the range of actors directly or indirectly included in the mediation; (3) coordinating among third-parties; (4) monitoring and advising on implementation as part of formal follow-up mechanisms“.
The filters include null values. These are inbuilt with Tableau and can be ignored – this filter exists in case any null values exist in the data, but there are none present here, and the null checkbox can be left checked at all times, this is not showing any erroneous data.
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