In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, military governments present themselves as the voice of restored popular sovereignty.
Yet political parties have been dissolved in all three countries, more than a thousand civil society organizations have been suspended in Burkina Faso, and labor unions are under attack in Niger.
Writing for Global Voices, Jean Sovon asks what becomes of the right to protest when those in power claim to embody the very people on whose behalf protests are held.
Sovon’s analysis, part of Global Voices’ September 2026 Spotlight series “Protest in Democracy,” traces how the three juntas have methodically dismantled the pluralism they promised to revitalize.
The question he poses is direct: if part of the population supports the new authorities, does that mean those who criticize them are no longer part of the people?
Three countries, one institutional path
The backdrop is a region where citizens had already taken to the streets before the military seized power. In Mali, the 2020 protests contributed to the context in which the army overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta.
In Burkina Faso, the two coups of 2022 occurred amid widespread frustration over insecurity. In Niger, the ouster of elected President Mohamed Bazoum in July 2023 was followed by a military statement emphasizing national sovereignty.
What followed, according to Sovon, was a systematic narrowing of civic space.
In Mali, a national consultation boycotted by a large portion of the political class recommended in late April 2025 the dissolution of political parties and the installation of General Assimi Goïta as president for a five-year term.
The decree dissolving the parties was signed on May 13, 2025, despite two protests organized in early May in Bamako by political parties and civil society organizations to oppose it.
According to a regional situation report cited by Sovon, these were the first opposition demonstrations in Bamako since 2020. Independent UN experts warned that the measure paved the way for the criminalization of all political activity.
On July 3, 2025, Goïta’s term was set at five years, renewable “as many times as necessary,” according to France 24.
Since early May 2026, Malian authorities have intensified their crackdown on the political opposition through arbitrary arrests, documented by a recurring pattern of abductions attributed to the National Agency for State Security.
In Burkina Faso, political activities were suspended as of September 30, 2022, and all political parties were formally dissolved on January 29, 2026 — a move described as “definitive” by CIVICUS.
On April 15, 2026, 118 civil society organizations active in human rights, health or education were dissolved under a July 2025 law on freedom of association. Binta Sidibé Gascon, president of the Kisal Observatory, told Human Rights Watch that the mass dissolution of civil society organizations was “merely the latest move by the Burkina Faso junta to silence dissent and prevent any scrutiny of its dismal human rights record,” adding that the decision reinforced “a climate of fear that paralyzes independent civic activity.”
In Niger, on March 26, 2025, President Abdourahamane Tiani signed a decree dissolving all political parties, which had already been suspended since the July 2023 coup.
In August 2025, several labor unions representing legal professionals were dissolved, prompting condemnation from the Niger Bar Association and a two-day general strike by lawyers, according to Human Rights Watch.
In its July 2026 report, HRW lists several restrictive measures taken by the military authorities, including dissolving political parties and independent unions, detaining journalists under a cybercrime law, revoking citizenship from opponents, announcing a withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, and extending the transition period with no prospect of elections.
Who speaks for the people?
Sovon notes that the three juntas justify these measures using the same rhetoric: sovereignty, national renewal and the fight against foreign interference.
Amnesty International formalized this observation in a statement presented to the UN Human Rights Council, finding that in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, military regimes are gradually restricting freedoms in the name of the fight against imperialism and the protection of national sovereignty, with laws enforced by decree, without parliamentary oversight or constitutional review.
This is the situation facing the few journalists who continue to work in the three countries. Amnesty International collected testimonies from three of them, using pseudonyms, in a report published on April 30, 2026.
One, identified as Mohamed C., told the organization that the crackdown is most severe in Burkina Faso but that in all three countries there has been a major setback, with quality media outlets that have history and tradition at risk of disappearing.
The same report notes that Amnesty had already documented the crackdown on the media in Niger in a March 2025 report, before launching a campaign in October 2025 dedicated to the situation of activists and journalists in the three countries.
When political parties and unions disappear
The disappearance of organized structures does not mean the disappearance of dissent, Sovon writes. It changes its form and often its scale.
In Burkina Faso, on May 26, 2026, the arrest of Imam Mohamed Ishaq Kindo, a critic of a bill regulating religious practices, sparked outrage among his followers, who protested in the capital, Ouagadougou, before being dispersed by law enforcement.
Sovon describes this as proof that the streets remain a possible outlet, even if only sporadically and at great risk, in a country where political parties no longer exist.
In Niger, it was lawyers, through their professional association, who led the protest following the dissolution of the judicial unions in 2025 — another form of institutional resistance rather than street protest, as documented by HRW.
Elsewhere, Sovon argues, protest has taken refuge in less visible spaces: social media, satirical content, private messaging groups and campaigns led by the diaspora.
These forms are, by their very nature, harder to gauge and therefore harder to suppress entirely, but they are also less capable of producing lasting political organization.
Security as a barrier to protest
Any analysis of protest in the Sahel must take into account a factor that distinguishes it from other authoritarian contexts: war. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are facing armed groups linked to Al-Qaeda (JNIM) and the Islamic State.
Civilians are the primary victims. In Burkina Faso, Amnesty International documented that between March 10 and 11, 2026, the army and its VDP auxiliaries unlawfully killed at least 58 unarmed civilians in and around Solenzo.
This security situation serves as a recurring justification for restrictions on civic space.
HRW notes that in all three countries, governments have continued to restrict freedom of expression, dissent and the media while pursuing their disengagement from regional and international bodies — effective withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and all three countries’ withdrawal from the International Criminal Court.
For observers of the Central Sahel, Sovon writes, the major challenge lies in determining where legitimate protection of the population ends and where the manipulation of fear to stifle dissent begins.
Can a democracy exist without the right to disagree?
Although they share the same context, the three countries have not followed identical paths. The levels of popular support for the authorities differ, as does the intensity of the armed conflict.
But one phenomenon is common across recent reports: the systematic shrinking of civic space, barely a year after the juntas promised to give the people a voice.
Sovon argues that a citizen may support breaking away from former colonial powers and at the same time demand that the new authorities be held accountable.
They may have approved a coup and now ask why political parties are banned, why labor unions are dissolved and why journalists are being prosecuted.
From the perspective of citizen oversight of public action, he writes, these positions are complementary rather than contradictory: being part of the people does not mean agreeing with those who govern in their name.
While this new configuration in the central Sahel positions military authorities as those who speak on behalf of the people, Sovon writes, it raises one of the region’s most significant democratic questions: do those who govern on behalf of the people still accept hearing a portion of that people respond to them in the streets or from exile, saying, “We do not agree”?
Source: Global Voices
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“excerpt”: “Jean Sovon of Global Voices examines how military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have dissolved political parties, suspended civil society organizations and targeted unions while claiming to speak for the people. His analysis, part of a September 2026 Spotlight series on protest and democracy, asks whether those who govern on behalf of the people still accept hearing dissent from the streets or from exile.”
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