Assistance to constitutional courts in fragile contexts : the case of Mali, 2017–2022

Abstract

The year 2021 witnessed a global “coup pandemic”, with the highest number of successful overthrows of government in the past twenty years. Many of them – in Chad, Guinea, Mali, Sudan – occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region historically prone to coups d’état. In the case of Mali, it was already the second coup in less than a year and the third within ten years following military takeovers in 2012 and 2020. This volatile political environment, combined with insecurity in central Mali and the border areas with Burkina Faso and Niger, has made Mali a highly fragile context for external interventions aimed at promoting the rule of law. According to the most recent available data by the World Justice Project (WJP), Mali’s rule of law situation ranked 114th across 140 countries globally and 22nd across 34 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Particularly, although trust in state institutions was relatively high compared with peer countries in the region, trust in Malian courts scored lowest among government institutions in a 2020 WJP country survey.