Oumou Niare: "Fighting for women is a moral duty"

Oumou Niare, Samaké's wife, is a magistrate at the tribunal de grande instance of commune III in Bamako, Mali. She is an African woman with a strong commitment to the women of her country and her community. Not only for her work in the judiciary, but also for her work with women's associations in Mali. She took up her position in the Malian judiciary in 2002 and in 2004 she started working as a deputy prosecutor. It is a time when Mali is still suffering from the wounds of its past, especially slavery, now in a new form of trafficking in women that flourishes with the small gold industries in the south of the country. Mali, with no legislation to effectively combat human trafficking, becomes the scene of atrocious acts committed against women, who are transformed into slaves.  It was then that Oumou Niare decided what she would devote her life and efforts to.  

In October 2021, Oumou Niare was part of a delegation of African women who visited Madrid for the RAISA programme. 20 women leaders from Africa and the Mediterranean meet in Spain to share their views and create links that will enable them to work together in the future.

How has Malian justice changed with regard to human trafficking in the last 20 years? 

My first job was as a deputy prosecutor at the tribunal de grande instance de la commune III in the district of Bamako. That is where I was really confronted with cases of human trafficking and migrant smuggling. What you have to know is that at that time there were no laws and it was very difficult to repress something that did not exist in our legal arsenal. It was very complicated because we had to be inventive. I wouldn't say that we invented the law, but we had to look in the articles of the penal code for what could correspond to the conditions for the consideration of a crime such as trafficking or smuggling of migrants.  

It should also be noted that since 2000 there has been a gold rush in Mali. This has led to many foreigners arriving in Mali in the mining areas, especially Nigerian women who have arrived as victims of trafficking. Some of them dared to come and denounce, but there was no response from the Malian justice system. There was already a language barrier with the police, with the administration of justice, with the magistrates. However, I was lucky enough to do part of my studies in the United States, so I have the opportunity to speak English, and I told myself that I had to fight for them.  Because they don't have a voice. 

So I set up a working system at that time with my lawyer. We had to set up a hotspot for human trafficking and migrant smuggling.  At that time, this was also a subject that Malian magistrates knew very little about, so we also had to train them.  The next point was to have a law to repress trafficking. But in the meantime, as long as there was no law, we had to look for crimes that could correspond in a similar way, as I have already explained.  And, fortunately, we found at the time, in the penal code, offences such as assault, kidnapping, which exist and which serve this purpose. This is the legal arsenal that was used for years. Until, in 2012, just after the coup d'état, we were lucky enough to have a woman magistrate at the head of the Ministry of Justice. From that moment on, women's associations, of which I was also a member, exchanged a lot with her and we were able to have a law in 2012. Thanks to this minister. Sanogo Aminata Mallé.  

She made it her hobbyhorse, because the law was promulgated, but it was not known at all, neither by the public, nor by the judiciary, nor by the police. It was then necessary to do a lot of work to cover a huge area with this new law. State magistracies are scattered throughout Mali's vast territory. Therefore, not all magistrates in Mali have the same opportunities, resources or facilities.  A magistrate working in Bamako and a magistrate working in Gao or Timbuktu, for example, do not have the same means to keep abreast of legal developments and the promulgation of laws. So he made it his hobbyhorse. He decided that this law should be made public throughout Mali. 

Can you talk about these victims? Who are they? Where do they come from? Who are the culprits?

First of all, it is important to realise that Mali is a country of departure, transit and destination for many human flows. It is therefore difficult to deal with many cases. Some Nigerian women only pass through Bamako, others stay, many go to mining areas.... There are some who come to prostitute themselves, but you have to know from the beginning that when they leave Nigeria, a whole scenario is set in motion to subjugate them. There are women called "mama" who recruit young girls from Benin City, most of them, according to the statistics. When they come, a whole scenario is organised for them, they are taken to a temple, they are made to swear not to betray the "mama". And they are forced to go to Mali for a period of 4 or 5 years under threats and coercion to pay a certain amount of money for such a period of time, on pain of having their relatives executed if they do not keep their promise. They cut their hair or nails, they put them in a bag.... It's a ritual, it's a huge psychological pressure. In Mali, they are petrified, it's terrifying.

These Nigerian women end up, in the vast majority of cases, in bars or villages in the mining areas, which, as I said before, exploded in the south of the country in the 2000s. These are villages inhabited mainly by Nigerians, where virtually only English is spoken, even though French is the official language of Mali but not of Nigeria. These are villages in the south that are exclusively dedicated to the extraction of minerals, but very often in an artisanal way.  

So generally the culprits are also people, men, who come from Nigeria. They are networks to be precise. These same networks are also involved in other crimes, like drugs and so on. Very often they come to Mali because they are the ones who accompany the women under the orders of the "mama". This is the downside of ECOWAS, which includes the free movement of people within its territory. 

How does Malian society react to this problem?

What is important to know is that prostitution is frowned upon in Mali and, unfortunately, with the arrival of these Nigerian women, it has become the profession of Nigerian women. That is why, when we talk about pimping and prostitution in Mali, we talk about Nigerian women.  But it must be said that there are also Malians who are involved in this type of activity, sometimes they go there to work in the mines, but also to prostitute themselves.  Unfortunately, the general perception of Malians towards women is very bad, and this is something that goes against our efforts to publicise and present them as the real victims of all this trafficking, because they are the victims. Very often, Malians don't understand and don't know that trafficking is not voluntary. So there is also a lot of work at the grassroots level, at the level of the population, at the level of the administration, and we work a lot with the Nigerian embassy with which, fortunately, we have a very good relationship because we have been lucky enough to find "very good" people at this level, who understand that it is a big problem and who are willing to help us.  

This international cooperation allows us to carry out raids with the Malian police, but also with Interpol in bars and villages in the mining areas. And that's when we recover the victims. We do this with the support of the Nigerian embassy. This allows us to show that we are not only there to drive Nigerians out of Mali, because we are also with their administration. 

Does the current situation in Mali, which suffered a coup d'état in 2020, have any impact on your work and the smooth functioning of the fight against trafficking?  

I could say that in my daily work, at the level of justice, it has not had an impact. But in my work in the associative sector, there has been an impact. You should know that many technical and financial partners withdrew from Mali after the 2020 coup d'état. I am referring to the US administration, for example, to the Americans who had given funds to the Malian justice system to better combat trafficking. They are also heavily involved in this fight.  

In 2010, Mali was on the US red list. As I said, it took the arrival of the minister, when we had no law, and we were on the red list of countries that least combat trafficking and slavery, and we were able to reverse this trend since 2012.  So the coup d'état had indirect implications for my work, and more related to the outside of Mali, not the inside.  

 What is your feeling and what are your emotions about being a woman, in Mali, fighting for women?

For me it is a moral obligation I have to these women. I have always said that when you have the opportunity to be educated, to go to school, in countries like mine, to do higher education, you also have to give to other women. That's why I want to work for women in my country, especially women in rural areas. And I think this is absolutely necessary. When women come to the jurisdiction, they are totally lost. We have to work for them and with them, not only through the courts but also through associations.   Not only in Mali, but in all African women, we must create a strong chain, in which we are the links.