Northern Mali has been occupied by radical Islamists after fighting broke out in January 2012 between Government forces and Tuareg rebels. The conflict uprooted thousands of people and prompted the Malian Government to request military assistance from France to stop the progression of extremist groups.

There have been several attacks on the country’s cultural heritage, including last month when Islamist extremists reportedly set fire to a library in the city of Timbuktu containing thousands of historic manuscripts and in December when at least three mausoleums were destroyed.

“At this moment, we must act quickly to safeguard and rebuild this country’s outstanding cultural heritage – this is essential for national unity and reconciliation,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.

“This heritage is a source of strength and confidence for the people of Mali as they consolidate the foundations of peace,” she added.

Ms. Bokova is meeting with the Malian authorities in the capital, Bamako, as well as in Timbuktu to kick-start a UNESCO programme of assistance to rebuild the country’s cultural heritage and to safeguard its documentary heritage.

Earlier this week, the Paris-based UNESCO announced it will send a team of experts to Mali to assess the damage and determine the most urgent tasks as soon as security conditions allow it. A special working group will also be established to draw up an action plan to guide reconstruction activities in the medium and long term.

After the latest wave of destruction at Timbuktu on 23 December, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has called on the international community to act urgently to protect Mali’s cultural heritage.

“I am profoundly shocked by the ferocity that has marked the latest round of destruction of Timbuktu’s mausoleums,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.

At least three mausoleums in Mali were reportedly destroyed, including that of the Al Hassan and Al Houseyni twins, the agency said in a news release.

Two emergency missions were carried out to assess damage, and the UN World Heritage Committee adopted a resolution to create an emergency fund for the rehabilitation and safeguarding of Mali’s cultural heritage.

“I call on the whole of the international community to act, as a matter of urgency, and take the measures necessary to guarantee the protection of this heritage, which is such an important part of Mali’s cultural identity, and of humanity’s history,” said Ms. Bokova.

“Such wanton destruction on these inestimable treasures is a crime against the people of Mali, who have always shown great tolerance towards different religious and spiritual beliefs and practices.”

According to UNESCO, Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a centre for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Northern Mali has been occupied by radical Islamists after fighting broke out in January between Government forces and Tuareg rebels – just one of several security, political and humanitarian problems the West African nation has been dealing with this year.

The renewed clashes in the north, as well as the proliferation of armed groups in the region, drought and political instability in the wake of a military coup d’état in March have uprooted hundreds of thousands of civilians this year. An estimated five million people have been affected by the conflict.

The three rebel groups – Ansar Dine, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – have recruited several hundred children into their forces; carried out executions, floggings, and at least eight amputations as punishment; and systematically destroyed numerous religious shrines of cultural and religious importance.In April 2012, the rebel groups consolidated their control over the northern regions of Kidal, Timbuktu, and Gao.

“The Islamist armed groups have become increasingly repressive as they have tightened their grip over northern Mali,” said Corinne Dufka, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Stonings, amputations, and floggings have become the order of the day in an apparent attempt to force the local population to accept their world view. In imposing their brand of Sharia law, they have also meted out a tragically cruel parody of justice and recruited and armed children as young as 12.”

Since July, Human Rights Watch has conducted 97 interviews in Mali’s capital, Bamako, with witnesses and victims of abuses, as well as others knowledgeable about the human rights situation, including religious and traditional leaders, medical personnel, rights activists, teachers, diplomats, journalists, and government officials. Many witnesses had fled the affected areas; those who remained in rebel-controlled areas were interviewed by telephone. Witnesses described abuses taking place in the northern towns of Gao, Timbuktu, Goundam, Diré, Niafounké, Ansongo, Tissalit, Aguelhoc, and Kidal.

In January, the rebel groups had undertaken a military offensive to gain control of northern Mali, originally alongside separatist ethnic Tuareg group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). They have since largely driven the MNLA out of the north.

Ansar Dine aims to impose a strict interpretation of Sharia throughout Mali. AQIM, affiliated with al Qaeda since January 2007, has been implicated in attacks against civilians and kidnaping for ransom of tourists, businessmen, and aid workers, some of whom have been executed. MUJAO, created in late 2011 as a largely Mauritanian offshoot of AQIM, has claimed responsibility for kidnapping several humanitarian workers and, on April 5, seven Algerian diplomats. MUJAO and Ansar Dine have claimed responsibility for many abuses, including killings, amputations, and the destruction of religious shrines and other culturally important structures.

The Islamist groups’ advance took advantage of the political and security chaos that followed a coup in Bamako on March 22 by junior Malian military officers, which reflected their dissatisfaction with the government’s response to the MNLA rebellion. The interim government established in April has since then been dogged by infighting and power struggles, paralyzing their response to the situation in the north.

Ansar Dine, MUJAO, and AQIM appear to be closely coordinating with each other, Human Rights Watch said. While particular groups seem to control particular regions – for example, Ansar Dine in Kidal and Timbuktu and MUJAO in Gao – their forces often move fluidly between areas and have reinforced each other during unrest. Furthermore, several commanders and fighters from MUJAO and Ansar Dine were identified by multiple witnesses as having previously been affiliated with AQIM. Many residents said they reached the conclusion that, in the words of one witness, “Ansar Dine, MUJAO and AQIM are one in the same.” Witnesses said the majority of commanders were non-Malian, and came from Mauritania, Algeria, Western Sahara, Senegal, Tunisia, and Chad.

The Islamist armed groups have carried out beatings, floggings, arbitrary arrests, and executed two local residents, all for engaging in behavior decreed as “haraam”’ (forbidden) under their interpretation of Sharia, dozens of witnesses and five victims from the north told Human Rights Watch. These included smoking or selling cigarettes; consuming or selling alcoholic beverages; listening to music on portable audio devices; having music or anything other than Quranic verse readings as the ringer on cellphones, and failing to attend daily prayers.

On July 30, the Islamist authorities in Aguelhocstoned to death a married man and a woman he was not married to for adultery, reportedly in front of 200 people. Theyalso have punished women for failing to adhere to their dress code – which requires women to cover their heads, wear long skirts, and desist from wearing jewelry or perfume – and for having contact with men other than family members.

Throughout the north, the punishments for these “infractions” as well as for those accused of theft and banditry were meted out by the Islamic Police, often after a summary “trial” before a panel of judges hand-picked by the Islamist authorities. Many of the punishments were carried out in public squares after the authorities had summoned the local population to attend.

Many witnesses described seeing men and women detained or whipped in marketplaces and on the street, often by armed adolescents, for smoking, drinking alcohol, or failing to cover themselves adequately. Some frail elderly residents collapsed from the floggings.

Many residents of Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao regions told Human Rights Watch that they saw children inside apparent training camps of the Islamist armed groups. They also observed children as young as 11 years manning checkpoints, conducting foot patrols, riding around in patrol vehicles, guarding prisoners, enforcing Sharia law, and cooking for rebel groups. One witness described children being taught to gather intelligence by walking through town and later “having to repeat what they had seen and heard.”

Since April, the Islamist groups have amputated the limbs of at least eight men accused of theft and robbery, seven in the Gao region. Human Rights Watch interviewed the victim of the August 8 hand amputation in Ansongo and two witnesses to the five amputations that took place in Gao on September 10. Amputating the hands, feet, or limbs of an individual as a criminal punishment is torture, in violation of international law.

Islamist militants in Timbuktu have destroyed numerous structures – including mausoleums, cemeteries, and shrines – which hold great religious, historical, and cultural significance to Malians. Timbuktu residents described feeling deeply shaken by the destruction. One woman told Human Rights Watch that, “It only took them about an hour and a half to break apart our heritage, our culture.” A man who witnessed the destruction of the tomb of Sidi Mahmoudsaid, “As they broke the tomb, yelling ‘Allah hu Akbar’ for all to hear, hundreds of us were weeping both inside and out.”

International humanitarian and human rights law prohibits any mistreatment of people in custody, including executions, torture, and pillage. The use of child soldiers and the deliberate destruction of religious and cultural property are also prohibited. Leaders of the rebel groups may be liable under international law for abuses committed by forces under their command, Human Rights Watch said.

“The decision strongly condemned the acts of destruction of mausoleums in the World Heritage property of Timbuktu and called for an end to these ‘repugnant acts,” the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said in a news release today.

Fighting between Government forces and Tuareg rebels resumed in northern Mali in January. The instability and insecurity resulting from the renewed clashes, as well as the proliferation of armed groups in the region, and a deepening crisis due to a coup d’état in March, have uprooted nearly 320,000 people, with many of them fleeing to neighbouring countries.

There had been reports earlier this year of rebel groups looting centres containing thousands of ancient books and documents in Timbuktu. In addition, there have been reports of the destruction of three sacred tombs – the Mausoleums of Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi Moctar and Alpha Moya – that are part of the Timbuktu site, which was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a centre for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The 21-member Committee came to its decision yesterday in St. Petersburg yesterday, where it has been holding its 36th session. It meets once a year, and is responsible for the implementation of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, which defines the kind of natural or cultural sites which can be considered for inscription on the World Heritage List.

Late last week, it had accepted a request from the Government of Mali to place Timbuktu, as well as the Tomb of Askia, on the List of World Heritage in Danger, which is designed to inform the international community of threats to the outstanding universal values for which a property has been inscribed on the World Heritage List, and to encourage corrective action.

The Committee also asked Mali’s neighbours to help prevent the trafficking in cultural objects from the sites, and urged the African Union and the international community to do everything possible to help protect Timbuktu, inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1988.

Over the past few days, UNESCO’s Director-General, Irina Bokova, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the President of the General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, have expressed their concern over the situation in Timbuktu, and condemned the attacks which damaged the mausoleums.

In its decision made in St. Petersburg, the World Heritage Committee called on UNESCO’s Ms. Bokova to create the special fund for Mali, and appealed to all UNESCO Member States, the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to provide financial resources to the fund.

The Committee also asked that Ms. Bokova send a mission to Mali, when possible, with a view to assessing, together with national and local authorities concerned as well as the local authorities, the extent of the damage and destruction and define urgent conservation needs.

The Committee recognized efforts already undertaken to help Mali safeguard its heritage, and the efforts of the Economic Community of West African States and the countries of the region to help the people of Mali resolve its crisis.

Earlier this year, UNESCO and the Government of Mali defined measures to safeguard World Heritage Properties in the country’s north – including Timbuktu – following reports of wilful damage to mausoleums at the site.

The agreed-on steps included Mali finalizing its accession to the 1999 Second Protocol to the Hague Convention of 1954 for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which, amongst others, penalizes the intentional destruction of cultural heritage. Malian authorities had also requested the inscription of Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia on the Committee’s List of World Heritage in Danger – which it did in late June.

Mali will also draft a report on priority measures for its World Heritage sites, in line with international heritage conventions, and it will request technical and financial assistance from UNESCO and the international community.

For its part, amongst other actions, UNESCO agreed to help the Government of Mali in reinforcing protection for all of its cultural properties, and raise awareness in neighbouring countries and among the international community of the situation to help fight the illicit trade in cultural artefacts.