Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options

Radical Islamists who seized northern Mali earlier this year are maintaining their hold through fear and imposing an extremist version of Shariah law, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic said on Oct. 10. Among the human rights abuses committed by the Islamists, he cited “very drastic punishments,” the recruitment of child soldiers and forced marriages that are a smokescreen for forced prostitution. “They have tremendous resources to buy loyalty because they are now having kickbacks from narco-traffickers in the region,” Simonovic said at U.N. Headquarters in New York. Mali is a transit corridor for cocaine and other drugs from South America to Europe. Fighting between government forces and Tuareg rebels broke out in January. The renewed clashes, drought and political instability in the wake of a military coup d’état in March have led over 250,000 Malians to flee to neighboring countries, with 174,000 Malians internally displaced.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

This week on “Jesuitical,” Zac and Ashley chat with Mark Francis, C.S.V., who attended Catholic Theological Union with Leo XIV (then known as Bob Prevost), about the unique education that shaped the future pope.
JesuiticalMay 23, 2025
Catholic bishops are calling for prayer after two Israeli Embassy staff members were slain late May 21 outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.
President Donald Trump meets South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Trump offered a vibrant demonstration of the kind of worst-case scenario Pope Leo may have had in mind about the collapse of critical thinking.
Kevin ClarkeMay 22, 2025
In his first appointment of a top-level official of the Roman Curia, Pope Leo XIV named Sister Tiziana Merletti, a canon lawyer, to be secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.