ATTACKS ...

“These are ghost villages. Only huts are left; nothing else. Everyone has gone,” said a humanitarian worker who requested anonymity.

The displaced congregate in central Mali’s large towns, such as Mopti and Sevare. Out of 200,000 people displaced by Mali’s conflict, half are located in the country’s center.

Boureima Barry, 56, is one such displaced person. He fled his village, several kilometers from the town of Bandiagara.

He told he was among the first to leave in April last year. Now everyone is gone.

“It’s been a year and the situation hasn’t improved,” he said from a tent in a makeshift displaced persons’ camp in a football stadium in Sevare.

No protection

Alioune Tine, an independent expert sent to central Mali by the United Nations in late February, said that neither Malian troops nor UN peacekeepers were able to protect civilians.

The UN has some 13,000 people stationed in Mali as part of its MINUSMA peacekeeping mission in the country.

Tine pointed to the mostly Fulani village of Ogassagou near the Burkina Faso border, where some 30 people were killed last month.

About 160 people were killed in an attack on the same village in March last year.

“That means that protection for civilians is not there,” he said.

People who have not yet fled their villages also face deep food insecurity problems, according to the United Nations.

The governor of Mopti, Abdoulaye Cisse, said the general situation in central Mali was worrying but “not insurmountable,” pointing to locally brokered ceasefires as bright spots.

“Whatever we do, one day or another, we will sit down,” Cisse said, referring to talks with militant groups.

“Why wait until there are thousands of deaths to go back to negotiations,” the governor added.