Bamako — The release of a major human rights investigation into Mali’s long-running conflict has set off a wave of public debate and hard questions about what comes next. The report, made public on 28 September 2026, accuses members of the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa), operating alongside foreign fighters from the Wagner group, of committing war crimes against civilians between 2023 and 2025.
The scope of the investigation
Titled “No one is spared”, the report draws heavily on research conducted in Mauritania among Malian refugees. Investigators say they gathered testimony from 119 people originally from the Ségou, Mopti and Tombouctou regions. Those accounts were cross-checked against other sources, and information about military operations was also analysed.
What the findings show
The picture painted is stark: at least 34 civilians are said to have been killed in seven Malian localities between June 2023 and December 2025 during operations attributed to Malian forces and their Wagner allies. The report also documents cases of torture, enforced disappearance, looting and the destruction of civilian property.
Civilians caught up in military operations
The documented incidents are concentrated in Mali’s central and northern regions, particularly Ségou, Mopti and Tombouctou — areas long scarred by insecurity and the activity of armed groups.
According to the investigation, some victims were killed as they tried to flee or after being arrested. There are also accounts of people being beheaded or burned. In Tin Adanda, in the Tombouctou region, four people were reportedly killed during a joint patrol in February 2025.
Pastoral communities under suspicion
One of the report’s central concerns is the treatment of pastoral populations, especially Fulani, Arab and Tuareg communities. Many of the victims belonged to these groups, which were accused or suspected of ties to armed groups simply because of their ethnicity or their presence in areas controlled or frequented by insurgents.
The organisation warns against what it sees as a dangerous generalisation: treating an entire community as synonymous with armed groups could expose civilians to collective reprisals.
Drone strikes at the heart of the accusations
The report also examines two drone strikes carried out in 2025 by Malian forces in the Tombouctou region. According to the findings, these strikes killed at least 23 people, including at least five children.
One of the most documented cases involves the Ejdeir market, struck on 16 March 2025. The report states that 16 people were killed and seven others wounded. Investigators say they found no evidence of fighters or military objectives at the market at the time of the strike.
Malian authorities had said they were targeting “meetings of terrorists”. The investigation notes that the geographical information provided by the authorities corresponds to the location struck at Ejdeir. In the absence of a proven military target, such an attack could amount to a direct attack on civilians and should be investigated as a possible war crime, the report argues.
This is a particularly sensitive issue in a conflict where the authorities present military operations as essential to fighting jihadist groups and other armed organisations. The report does not challenge the right of the authorities to combat armed groups in principle. It does, however, stress the obligation to respect international humanitarian law and to protect civilian populations.
Allegations of torture on military bases
Another grave section of the report focuses on accusations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees.
Investigators say they interviewed 15 men who described being tortured during joint patrols or at military bases, including in Léré and Nampala. Their accounts were corroborated by witnesses who said they had seen torture inflicted on around 30 people.
The methods described are particularly violent: suspending detainees by their arms, simulated drowning, beatings with metal bars or sticks, and electric shocks. According to the report, five people died in military bases as a result of torture or poor detention conditions.
The report states that the acts were mainly carried out by Wagner members, sometimes in the presence of Malian soldiers. Some individuals were held for days or even months without being brought before a court, without access to legal assistance and without being able to contact their families.
Wagner departs, Africa Corps remains
The report comes as Russia’s presence in Mali has shifted. The Wagner group, present in the country since late 2021, was replaced in June 2025 by Africa Corps, a structure under the control of the Russian Ministry of Defence.
The organisation is calling on Malian authorities to publicly clarify their relationship with Africa Corps and the oversight mechanisms that apply to its members. For the investigators, a change of structure must not lead to an absence of accountability when violations of international law are committed.
This shift is part of a broader transformation of Mali’s security policy. Since the 2020 coup, the authorities have steadily deepened military cooperation with Russia while reducing their reliance on Western partners.
A crisis that goes beyond government forces
The report nevertheless stresses that the documented abuses cannot be attributed to a single side. In recent years, armed groups active in Mali have also been accused of serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Armed groups have carried out unlawful killings, abductions and other abuses against civilian populations, the report notes. This point matters in a complex conflict with multiple armed actors, where civilians are often caught between different forces.
The humanitarian situation remains dire. More than 2,036 schools were closed because of insecurity, depriving hundreds of thousands of children of access to education, according to figures presented in the Mali assessment.
The question of impunity
Beyond the accusations themselves, the report raises a central issue: justice.
The organisation says it transmitted its conclusions to Malian authorities on 3 August 2026 and had received no response by the time of publication. It is calling on Bamako to open “effective and impartial” investigations into the alleged crimes and to prosecute those responsible before courts that meet fair-trial guarantees, where the evidence justifies it.
The judicial question has taken on an extra dimension since Mali announced in June 2026 that it would withdraw from the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. According to the report, that withdrawal does not end proceedings already covered by the ICC’s jurisdiction: the court would retain jurisdiction over crimes within its mandate committed during the legally applicable period.
In this context, the report reads less as a simple inventory of abuses than as a warning about the risk of entrenched impunity.
What comes next for civilians and institutions
For civilian populations in Ségou, Mopti and Tombouctou, the challenge remains immediate: surviving a conflict in which the line between combatants and civilians is often fragile. For the Malian authorities, the accusations now represent another file that must be answered — for the sake of protecting populations, but also for the credibility of the institutions tasked with delivering justice.
Behind the statistics — 34 documented deaths, dozens of detainees tortured and dozens of other presumed victims — lies a reality harder to quantify: displaced families, villages emptied of their inhabitants and a population living between the threat of armed groups and the operations of security forces.
The report restates a fundamental requirement of international law: fighting armed groups does not exempt any party to the conflict from protecting civilians. In Mali, the battle against insecurity is therefore also being fought on another front — that of justice, accountability and the protection of populations.
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