On May 1, 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the military juntas in Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali to restore civilian rule swiftly, following meetings with Senegalese President Macky Sall in Dakar. “We agreed on the need to keep talking to the de facto authorities in all three countries to get a swift return to constitutional order,” Guterres stated, addressing the wave of coups in the Sahel: Mali (August 2020 and May 2021), Guinea (September 2021), and Burkina Faso (January 2022). These nations, grappling with jihadist insurgencies, face suspensions and sanctions from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), chaired by Sall, for delaying democratic transitions.
ECOWAS Sanctions and Junta Defiance
ECOWAS imposed severe sanctions on Mali in January 2022, including border closures and asset freezes, after the junta proposed a five-year transition, later revised to 24 months by March 2024, against ECOWAS’s 16-month election timeline. “The regime in Mali is continuing to defy ECOWAS pressure,” noted France 24, citing Mali’s April 21 announcement of a two-year transition “process.” Guinea’s junta leader, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, set a 39-month transition on April 30, 2022, later adjusted to 24 months in October 2022, but faced condemnation from opposition groups like the FNDC, who called it “inadmissible.” Burkina Faso’s junta, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, rejected ECOWAS’s call for a shorter timeline, sticking to a three-year plan, citing jihadist threats.
Regional and Global Challenges
Guterres highlighted the “triple crisis” of food, energy, and finance in Africa, worsened by the Russia-Ukraine war, which spiked commodity prices. Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso, among the world’s poorest, face acute food insecurity affecting 7.5 million people in 2022, per the World Food Programme. Guterres also addressed the climate emergency, noting, “African countries are often the first victims of global warming for which they are not responsible.” He urged developed nations to honor the $100 billion annual Paris Agreement pledge for renewable energy transitions, emphasizing debt relief to prevent defaults and support social safety nets in these nations.
Sahel’s Coup Epidemic and ECOWAS’s Struggle
The coups reflect a broader “epidemic,” as Guterres termed it, with 10 coups across Africa from 2019–2023, per Africa Defense Forum. ECOWAS’s inconsistent responses—harsh sanctions on Mali but leniency toward Burkina Faso—have drawn criticism for weakening its legitimacy. “The split worsens a legitimacy crisis of ECOWAS,” said Ulf Laessing of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. By January 2025, all three nations withdrew from ECOWAS to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), aligning with Russia and expelling Western forces, complicating regional security cooperation against jihadist groups like JNIM, which killed over 8,000 in Burkina Faso in 2023, per ACLED.
Ongoing Tensions and Implications
As of August 2025, transitions remain stalled. Mali’s junta postponed elections indefinitely in 2024, citing technical issues, while Guinea’s Doumbouya proposed a 2025 constitutional referendum, raising fears of entrenchment. Burkina Faso’s junta, now led by Ibrahim Traoré after a 2022 coup, faces ongoing insurgencies, with 40% of its territory uncontrolled. “ECOWAS has failed people’s expectations in upholding the rule of law,” Laessing noted. Guterres’ call for debt relief and climate action remains critical, but the juntas’ defiance and AES formation signal a shift toward authoritarianism and new geopolitical alignments, threatening democratic progress and regional stability in the Sahel.
