The World Factbook. Location: This entry identifies the country's regional location, neighboring countries, and adjacent bodies of water. Interior Western Africa, southwest of Algeria, north of Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, and Burkina Faso, west of Niger Geographic coordinates: This entry includes rounded latitude and longitude figures for the centroid or center point of a country expressed in degrees and minutes; it is based on the locations provided in the Geographic Names Server (GNS), maintained by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on behalf of the US Board on Geographic Names.
Map references: This entry includes the name of the Factbook reference map on which a country may be found. Note that boundary representations on these maps are not necessarily authoritative. The entry on Geographic coordinates may be helpful in finding some smaller countries. Area: This entry includes three subfields. This is the population pyramid for Mali. Mali. Skip to main content World Malaria 2014 Access Search Advanced search Navigation Language عربي 中文 English Français Русский Español Countries Mali Map This map is an approximation of actual country borders.
Statistics Contact information Monsieur le Représentant de l'OMS Fall, Dr Ibrahima-Socé Boîte postale 99 Bamako, Mali Telephone: +223 202 23714 afwcoml@who.int Country Office web site Regional Office web site Health profile Mortality and burden of disease Nutrition Risk factors Outbreaks and emergencies Mali health situation reports 11 January 2013 Bulletin articles Emergency obstetric care in Mali: catastrophic spending and its impoverishing effects on households 22 February 2013 You are here: Quick Links Sitemap Help and Services WHO Regional Offices loading.
Mischief On Mali—and the Amazigh. Mali is so obscure to the Western world that if you google the name of its president, Amadou Toumani Touré, you only get 202,000 entries, about the same as a mid-level well known American. The country has been afflicted by a civil war for long stretches of the past few decades, most notably from 1990 to 1996, but no one in the US has much noticed. Coverage of the political situation is particularly lacking. So I have been reading Roger Kaplan’s dispatches from Mali for the Weekly Standard, most notably a feature in the current issue, with great attention. As a French speaker with long experience in Africa, Kaplan comes with some credentials. And my knowledge of Mali is fragmentary and way out of date—I was first and last there in 1989. Unfortunately, Kaplan’s piece “Mischief in Mali” seems more likely to perpetuate American ignorance of what is going on in this part of the world than to dispel it. And because our military is involved, it seems important to critique Kaplan’s reasoning.
Libya shockwaves felt in Mali? The Mess in Mali - By Gregory Mann. It would be hard to overstate the mess that's been made out of Mali over the last fortnight. A surprise coup, an accelerating rebellion that has split the country in two, and an economic embargo by the landlocked country's neighbors have battered what had been, until recently, a West African success story. Add to that a looming food crisis in the northeast, and you have quite a fine mess. But the world can't turn away: Mali is too important to write off the country's 20-year old democracy as a failed experiment.
The coup was not accidental, as some have argued, but it was definitely improvisational. On March 22, a mutiny in the country's main garrison turned into a coup d'état as soldiers and junior officers chased President Amadou Toumani Touré from his palace. Its name aside, the junta aims to destroy, not to establish, democratic rule -- the coup took place little more than a month before a scheduled presidential election, in which Touré was not a candidate. Mali’s struggle: not simply of their own making. In examining the political crises which have gripped Mali in recent months, it is important not to fall into simplistic analyses of dysfunctional or “failed” African states.
Indeed, the Malian people have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to mobilize civil society and build stable democratic governance despite a history of enormous poverty, ethnic divisions, and foreign intervention. In 1991, more than two decades prior to similar pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Malians engaged in a massive nonviolent resistance campaign that brought down the dictatorship of Mousa Traoré. A broad mobilization of trade unionists, peasants, students, teachers, and others – supported by griots (traditional singing storytellers) who would sing allegorical songs regarding historical freedom struggles – created a mass movement throughout the country.
In the years since the 1991 revolution, even contentious politics was expressed largely nonviolently. Mali's Colonel Coup Syndrome. In his first interview after seizing power, Mali's self-proclaimed junta leader, Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo tells a journalist from Africable that he has never cast a vote in his life. If there are three candidates standing for election, he explains, rest assured he won't have confidence in any of them. And he'd rather not vote than choose. Earlier this week, Sanogo and his supporters within the army voted with their guns, ousting the government, arresting senior officials, and dissolving democratic institutions.
They did all this just a month before democratic presidential elections were scheduled. They weren't interested in voting in another guy; they were interested in overturning the entire system, as Alex Thurston, author of Sahel Blog, argues. The immediate trigger for the coup was frustration among mid- and lower-ranking military officials over the government's handling of an ongoing rebellion in the North.
But there are a few more layers here, I think. The Lesson from Mali: Do No Harm - By Christian Caryl. I realize that most Americans or Europeans wouldn't be able to pick out Mali on a map. But it's still a shame that recent events in that West African country have been getting so little attention. Until recently, Mali was one of Africa's big success stories. Now it's foundering. This is especially ironic when you consider that it may be the policies of the West -- well-intentioned policies that were aimed at ridding the world of a specific evil -- that have contributed to Mali's troubles.
In a continent that doesn't have much of a reputation for liberal governance, Mali stood out. Now that election has been postponed, and the fate of Mali's democracy is up for grabs. All that changed dramatically in January of this year, when a Tuareg separatist army, suddenly emerging from obscurity, achieved a stunning series of victories across the north. The uprising against Qaddafi began in February 2011. Qaddafi was finally captured and killed on October 20. ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images. The Coup in Mali Is Only the Beginning. On March 21, Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré scrambled down the Koulouba hillside into the Bamako neighborhood of Dar es Salaam. He was fleeing the Presidential Palace, which was under siege by troops declaring themselves the country's new rulers.
Like his tumble down the hill, his fall from grace was rapid, especially for a leader who was once hailed as a "soldier of democracy" -- a hero who had helped ensure Mali's successful transition to democracy, just two decades before. As shocking as the sudden coup was, however, it was soon overshadowed by conflicts in Mali's long-contested northern region. In the months before the coup, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), an ethnic Tuareg nationalist group, had been making considerable gains against the government. In early April, taking advantage of the confusion surrounding the coup, the MNLA declared independence for Azawad (the Tuareg homeland) in three of Mali's northern regions. Don't have an account? Trouble in Timbuktu - Ideas. Mali: War Crimes by Northern Rebels. (Bamako) – Separatist Tuareg rebels, Islamist armed groups, and Arab militias who seized control of northern Mali in April 2012 have committed numerous war crimes, including rape, use of child soldiers, and pillaging of hospitals, schools, aid agencies, and government buildings, Human Rights Watch said today.
An Islamist armed group has summarily executed two men, amputated the hand of at least one other, carried out public floggings, and threatened women and Christians. Human Rights Watch also received credible information that Malian army soldiers have arbitrarily detained and, in some instances, summarily executed ethnic Tuareg members of the security services and civilians. “Armed groups in northern Mali in recent weeks have terrorized civilians by committing abductions and looting hospitals,” said Corinne Dufka, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.
These and other armed groups undertook operations in January 2012 when the MNLA launched their bid for a separatist state. Mali: war, Islamism, and intervention. The advance of a radical movement in northern Mali, and its destruction of cultural treasures in the ancient city of Timbuktu, are increasing calls for a foreign military response. The escalation of the radical Boko Haram group's campaign in northern Nigeria in 2012 is posing increasing difficulties to the security forces in west Africa's largest state.
Now the state of Mali is experiencing an even greater challenge, as a period of internal turmoil is accompanied by the advance of the Ansar Dine (Defenders of Islam) paramilitary movement in the country's north. The character of Boko Haram and Ansar Dine has been shaped by particular regional and social cicrumstances, though in the course of their struggle both have become associated with an especially austere version of the Salafi current of Islam. This ideology appears to drive the latter to such acts as the destruction of centuries-old Sufi Islamic sites in Timbuktu following their occupation of the ancient city.
The Mali dynamic.