Armed groups in Mali that signed a major peace deal in 2015 said this week they would withdraw from efforts to draft a new constitution.
The new constitution is an important part of the peace and reconciliation process designed to return the country from military to civilian rule by March 2024.
The Coordination of Azawad Movement (CMA) – a mainly Tuareg alliance that fought the country for years before signing a peace deal in Algiers in 2015 – blamed the ruling military junta for dragging it out.
In a statement seen by AFP on Friday, the CMA indicated that – and almost all other armed groups that signed the peace agreement – in December suspended their participation in the peace process due to the junta’s “lack of politics to uphold it.”.
The decision to go ahead and boycott work on rewriting the constitution came just hours after Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop accused armed groups of “blocking” efforts to implement the peace process.
On the contrary, the “obvious damage” in the movement towards peace is due to the “obvious decline of interest”, said the statement, which was published on Friday.
The CMA repeated its request for a meeting with international mediators to discuss the viability of the peace deal, which it said in December was close to breaking down.
Mali experienced two military coups, in August 2020 and May 2021.
Under international pressure, the current military government has agreed to allow a return to civilian rule in March 2024.