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留问题继续盛行。由于缺乏保护性的法律的框架，与奴隶制有关的暴力行为的受害者往往别无选择，只能逃到更“好客”的地区，因为当地精英阶层有系统地禁止他们在家乡获得土地。这些被认定为奴隶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，这些流离失所者，大多数是农业人口，由于在新的收容社区继续被边缘化和被污名化，继续生活在不稳定的条件下，新的奴役形式的风险与历史上奴隶制的遗留问题严重重叠。西非与奴隶制有关的流离失所问题在发展和人道主义实践及报告中基本上被忽视。鉴于可持续发展目标，这无疑是一个重大遗漏。我们的项目着眼于历史上和当代最不为人所知的与奴隶制有关的国内流离失所问题，这些问题发生在卡耶斯地区的农村地区，其中绝大多数涉及妇女和儿童，因为这些社区的男子是城市和国外其他地方的移民。在马里当前的危机局势中，与被视为“奴隶后裔”的人口合作是一个紧迫的公平发展问题。我们的研究方案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历史，但更重要的是，我们提出了具体措施，以纠正这一长期未被承认的问题，通过提高马里各级地方和国家政府的认识，预测并有效管理被认定为奴隶地位的人的“逃亡”流离失所，从而缓解长期危机局势。我们的项目团队汇集了非洲历史，比较文学，法律，社会人类学和政治科学的专业知识和方法的独特组合，这些在发展方法中不太常见。它旨在通过探索可负担得起的和可升级的可持续生计解决方案，并为被调查的社区（和其他社区）提出直接可行的建议，构建一种具有变革和催化作用的协同方法。这项研究的变革性方面依赖于弥合被调查社区中的从业人员和学者之间的差距，并与被调查社区一道，通过一个网站、政策文件、纪录片、教材、培训、研究传播和在适当的决策层进行宣传，由两个马里非政府组织伙伴Donkosira和TEMEDT提供便利。

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.