Mali's relationship with the UN stabilisation mission from April 2013 to the end of its mandate on 31 December 2023. Bamako demanded the mission's departure in June 2023; the Security Council complied, and the compressed withdrawal handed the northern camps to a race that restarted the war.
A symmetric arrangement: it reads the same from either side. Authored once, on one record.
The arrangement
- Status
- EndedEnded, on the date the record states. A historical relationship, not a weakened one.Last material change: 2023-12-31.
- What it covers
- DefenceHumanitarianInstitutionalDiplomaticCategories the arrangement is documented to include. Not a measure: a relationship covering more of them is described in more detail, not held more firmly.
Summary
MINUSMA was created by Security Council resolution 2100 on 25 April 2013 to stabilise the north after the French intervention, and grew into one of the UN's largest operations and its deadliest of the era. Its relationship with successive Malian governments was one of dependence and friction: the state relied on the mission for protection of the northern towns and for logistics it could not provide, while rejecting its human-rights reporting — the Moura investigation above all — and resenting its inability to enforce an accord neither signatory implemented. The transitional authorities demanded its immediate departure on 16 June 2023; resolution 2690 ended the mandate on 30 June with a withdrawal to be completed by 31 December; the camps at Ber, Tessalit and Kidal were handed over or demolished under contested conditions; and the fighting for those camps between the army and the CMA began within weeks. The UN's humanitarian agencies and the Security Council's panel of experts remain; the peacekeeping instrument does not.
Why it matters
The mission's exit is the hinge of the module's chronology: it removed the presence that had held the northern question frozen, opened the road to the Kidal recapture and the Algiers accord's termination, and removed a documentation and payroll presence from the northern towns at once. Every humanitarian figure the module now carries for Mali comes from the agencies the mission left behind.
Related events
- MINUSMA established Apr 2013
Diplomatic · Military
- Signing of the Algiers Agreement May – Jun 2015
Diplomatic
- The army retakes Kidal 14 Nov 2023
Military · Territorial change
- Mali expels MINUSMA Jun – Dec 2023
Diplomatic · Military
Organisations
Structures through which this relationship operates. Not parties to it — the parties are the two actors above.
Places
Markers this module already publishes. This record adds no geographic precision of its own.
What remains unknown
- The terms on which individual camps were handed over, and what materiel remained in them, are contested between the UN, the government and the CMA and are not adjudicated here.
- What residual UN presence — beyond the humanitarian agencies and the panel of experts — remains in the north is not described in public in enough detail to record.
All Sahel relationships Open in Explore
Assessed as of — 2024-01 Last reviewed — 2026-09-28