Mali security chaos leaves dozens of children dead in last month, warns UN Children’s Fund

Mali security chaos leaves dozens of children dead in last month, warns UN Children’s Fund

Protracted conflict across Mali, along with internal displacement and limited humanitarian access are among the unprecedented risks threatening the country’s most vulnerable youngsters, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

“Children continue…to pay the highest price of a gravely worsening security crisis in Mali,” said Pierre Ngom, UNICEF Representative in Mali.

Briefing reporters in Geneva via Zoom, he said that “dozens” of youngsters had already been killed this month in the north and centre of the country.

In eastern Mali, Mr. Ngom also noted that non-state armed groups had claimed responsibility for a series of attacks against Malian security forces positioned in Gao – the largest town in the east - as well as repeated shelling of the airport and military encampments in Timbuktu, in the country’s centre.

Against this backdrop of chronic insecurity, almost a quarter of the country’s population is now experiencing moderate or acute food insecurity, according to UNICEF. More than 2,500 individuals are on the brink of famine in the crisis-affected Menaka region, including many children.

“Shrinking humanitarian access and growing internal displacement of populations are fuelling a child malnutrition crisis with one million under five (year-old) children at risk amidst the resurgence of polio and (a) measles epidemic,” said the UNICEF representative.

“Non-state armed groups are imposing a blockade on Timbuktu by cutting off demand supply routes. On 7 September 2023, an attack on a boat in the Gao-Timbuktu axis resulted in the deaths of at least 24 children,” said Mr. Ngom.

The ongoing attacks continue to create chaos and danger for the children and their education.

“More than 1,500 schools are still closed, and 9,000 teachers are affected partly because of insecurity and half a million children will not be in school when the school opens in a few weeks”, Mr. Ngom warned. “This heightened insecurity is somehow amplified by MINUSMA's ongoing departure”, he said, in reference to the UN peacekeeping operation in Mali that is drawing to a close by the end of this year.

MINUSMA was established by the Security Council in 2013, following a coup the previous year. Over the past decade, it has become the UN’s most challenging peacekeeping mission, suffering over 303 fatalities amid continuing extremist violence and rampant insecurity across much of the north and centre.

By December, the mission’s 12 camps and one temporary operating base will be closed and handed over to transitional authorities, while its uniformed personnel numbering about 12,947 will be repatriated.

Civilian staff will also be drawn down, and equipment – a load of approximately 5,500 sea containers and nearly 4,000 vehicles - relocated to other missions or repatriated to the countries that provided them.

According to latest estimates, at least 1.6 million children are in urgent need of protection in Mali. In 2022, UN agencies verified 1,024 grave violations against them, including recruitment and use by armed forces and armed groups, killing and maiming.

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Mali security chaos leaves dozens of children dead in last month, warns UN Children’s Fund

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