Illegible/invisibilised protracted rural displacements: slavery and forced internal migration in Mali

今天，在马里西部和南部的大多数社区，基于血统的奴隶制及其遗产继续盛行。由于缺乏保护法律框架，与奴隶制有关的暴力的受害者通常别无选择，只能逃到更“友好”的地区，因为当地精英有系统地禁止他们在家乡获得土地。那些被认为是奴隶地位的人口是萨赫勒地区最贫穷和最脆弱的人口。然而，在许多情况下，那些流离失所的人，主要是农业人口，继续生活在危险的条件下，因为新的收容社区继续被边缘化和污名化，新形式的奴役与历史奴隶制的遗产有强烈重叠的风险。在发展和人道主义实践和报告中，西非与奴隶制有关的流离失所问题基本上被忽视。鉴于可持续发展目标，这肯定是一个重大疏漏我们的项目着眼于与奴隶制有关的最隐蔽的历史和当代国内流离失所现象，这些流离失所现象发生在凯斯地区的农村地区，绝大多数涉及妇女和儿童，因为这些社区的男子是城市其他地方和国外的移民。在像今天马里普遍存在的这种危机情况下，与被认为是“奴隶后裔”的人口合作是一个紧迫的公平发展问题。我们的研究计划不仅旨在分析和绘制卡耶斯地区与奴隶制有关的长期流离失所的长期历史，更重要的是，我们提出具体措施，通过提高马里各级地方和国家政府的敏感度，预测和有效管理那些被归因于奴隶身份的人的‘逃亡’流离失所。我们的项目团队汇集了非洲历史、比较文学、法律、社会人类学和政治学方面的独特专业知识和方法，这些在发展方法中并不常见。其目的是通过探索可持续生计的负担得起和可升级的解决办法，并为接受调查的社区(及其他社区)提出直接可操作的建议，构建具有变革和催化作用的协同办法。这项研究的变革方面有赖于在两个马里伙伴非政府组织Donkosira和Temedt的协助下，通过网站、政策文件、纪录片、教材、培训、研究传播和适当决策层面的宣传，弥合被调查社区从业者和学者之间的差距。

Descent-based slavery and its legacies continue to prevail in most communities of the west and south of Mali today. Because of the lack of protecting legal framework, populations victims of slavery-related violence often have little choice but to escape to more 'hospitable' areas, having been systematically barred from land access in their home village by the local elite. Those populations with ascribed slave status are the poorest and the most vulnerable populations in the Sahel. In many cases though, those displaced, mostly agricultural populations continue to live in precarious conditions because of continuing marginalization and stigmatization in new host communities, with risks of new forms of servitude strongly overlapping with the legacies of historical slavery. Slavery-related displacements in West Africa have been largely overlooked in the development and humanitarian practice and reporting. This is certainly a major omission in view of the Sustainable Development GoalsOur project looks at the most invisibilised historical and contemporary slavery-related internal displacements, those taking place within the rural areas in the Kayes region and which concern in their vast majority women and children because men of those communities are migrants elsewhere in cities and abroad. In such crisis situation as the one prevailing today in Mali, working with populations who are considered of 'slave descent' is thus an urgent equitable development issue.Our research programme aims not only to analyse and map the long history of slavery-related protracted displacements in the Kayes region, but more importantly we propose concrete measures to redress this unacknowledged long-term crisis situation by sensitising the local and national government in Mali at every level to anticipate and efficiently manage those 'fugitive' displacements of people with ascribed slave status. Our project team brings together a unique combination of expertise and methods in African history, comparative literature, law, social anthropology and political sciences, which are less common in development approaches. It aims at constructing a synergistic approach with transformative and catalyst effect by exploring both affordable and upscalable solutions for sustainable livelihoods and proposing directly actionable recommendations for the surveyed communities (and beyond). The transformative aspect of this research relies on bridging the gaps between practitioners and scholars in and with the surveyed communities through a website, policy papers, documentary films, teaching material, trainings, research dissemination and advocacy at appropriate policy-making levels, facilitated by two Malian partner NGOs, Donkosira and TEMEDT.