Generating Respect Project fieldwork in Mali

News | Posted on Friday 5 November 2021

A Generating Respect Project (GRP) research team conducted fieldwork in Mali between July and August 2021.

From left to right, Piergiuseppe Parisi, Mohamed Assaleh, Moussa Touré and Aminata Samaké at the workshop on the influence of religious leaders on armed actors' compliance with international humanitarian norms held in Bamako - Photo credit Nicolás Braguinsky Cascini.
From left to right, Piergiuseppe Parisi, Mohamed Assaleh, Moussa Touré and Aminata Samaké at the workshop on the influence of religious leaders on armed actors' compliance with international humanitarian norms held in Bamako - Photo credit Nicolás Braguinsky Cascini.

The research team composed of Piergiuseppe Parisi, Mohamed Assaleh and Nicolás Braguinsky Cascini.

Piergiuseppe and Mohamed presented respectively the objectives and scope of the GRP and the preliminary findings of the research on Mali at a workshop co-organised by the GRP, Geneva Call Mali and Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Centre. The event, which focused on the influence of religious leaders on armed actors' compliance with international humanitarian norms in Mali, took place in Bamako and gathered contributions from Malian religious leaders and scholars, state officials and humanitarian workers.

The research team also conducted several interviews with religious actors, state officials and armed groups' spokespersons. The data gathered during the fieldwork in Mali will complement the preliminary findings presented at the workshop, and they will feed into scholarly publications and conference presentations.

In addition, Nicolás filmed part of the workshop and over fifteen interviews with religious actors, humanitarian workers and state officials. The rich audio-visual material gathered will form the basis of a series of digital stories that will be released over the next months. The first of these stories, which focuses on inspiring Mme Cissé Zeïnab Keïta, has been presented at the Geneva Peace Week 2021.