On 2 April 2012, Ansar Dine and AQIM – armed groups pursuing a jihadist ideology – took control of the city in Timbuktu, northern Mali. Over the following nine months, Ansar Dine/AQIM imposed a system of Sharia-based rules and norms on the population, introducing harsh punishments for non-compliance, including public floggings and arrests., They also forced women and girls into “marriages” with their members – a disguise for subjecting them to rape and sexual slavery. On 26 June 2024, the Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) delivered its judgment against Mr Al Hassan, a high-profile member of Ansar Dine/AQIM’s Islamic police that played a key role in enforcing the group’s rules.
In the first ICC trial that examined a charge of gender-based persecution, the judges acknowledged that Ansar Dine/AQIM specifically targeted women and girls, deprived them of fundamental rights, imposed “specific rules and prohibitions”, and punished violations with “harsh punishment and detention conditions, involving gender-specific violence”. However, while the judges found Al-Hassan guilty of torture and religious persecution, they acquitted him of gender persecution – even though a majority of the judges concluded that members of Ansar Dine/AQIM perpetrated persecution on the basis of gender.
REDRESS, together with other organisations and experts led by Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice (WIGJ), submitted observations in the Al Hassan reparations proceedings before the ICC Trial Chamber. The organisations called on the Chamber to order reparation measures that are survivor-centred, structurally corrective, and gender transformative, to remedy the gender and intersectional harm inflicted on victims.
