Slavery, Jihad and human rights

This article confronts the paradigm of “human rights for the security of populations” with a little-discussed dimension of the hybrid conflict that has developed in central Mali since 2015: slavery and, more broadly, historically entrenched relations of domination. This conflict has its origins in the jihads of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, led by marginalized Fulani communities, which led to the establishment of a series of Islamic states, accompanied by a slave economy based on an internal distinction between masters and slaves. Ultimately, the conflict links a contemporary continuum: political democratization, economic decentralization, and land tenure; with a historical continuum: social domination, corruption, and emancipation through jihad.