A woman from Mali requested international protection in France, arguing that she would be exposed, in the event of return to her country of origin, to persecution or serious harm by armed groups in her region on account of her ethnic origins and the security situation, without being able to benefit from the effective protection of the authorities. She claimed to be from the town of Bandiagara, in the region of the same name, and of Dogon ethnicity. She was aware of clashes between the Dogon and Peuhl communities in the region. From 2019, the city of Bandiagara and several nearby localities were regularly attacked by jihadist groups. In 2021, her parents disappeared during an attack. On 10 March 2021, she left Bandiagara and went to Bamako where she lived without a fixed home. Fearing for her safety, she left Mali on 18 September 2022 and entered France on 20 June 2024. Lastly, she maintained that she would be in a situation of manifest vulnerability, if returned to her country of origin, as a single woman and mother of a young child born out of wedlock. Thus, the applicant did not maintain that she had been targeted because of her ethnic origin but feared the indiscriminate violence occurring in the region of Bandiagara.

By decision of 3 November 2025, the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) rejected the application and the applicant appealed before the National Court of Asylum (CNDA).

The CNDA allowed the appeal and provided subsidiary protection.

First, the CNDA noted that the applicant's consistent and personalized statements made it possible to establish her Malian nationality and her provenance from the town of Bandiagara. However, her statements did not establish that she would be personally exposed to persecution on account of her Dogon ethnic origins.

The CNDA noted that since 17 January 2012, Mali has been gripped by an armed conflict between jihadist armed groups and the Malian Armed Forces, supported, since the end of Operations Barkhane and Takuba in 2022 and ceasing of operations by the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) on 31 December 2023, by the Russian paramilitary organization Africa Corps, which succeeded Wagner.

The court observed that after starting in the north, the conflict spread to the center of Mali from 2015-2016, particularly in the Mopti region, where it took on an intercommunal dimension (between Fulani herders and Dogon and Bambara farmers), before reaching a large majority of the country from 2022 onwards, in a context of state weakness. The CNDA referred to its previous decision from 18 December 2025 in case 25032534 C+, in which it had ruled that the western region of Kayes, bordering Senegal and crucial for the supply and security of the capital, was gripped by a situation of indiscriminate violence of exceptional intensity.

The court observed that since April 2025, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported hundreds of extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances and other abductions committed by all parties to the conflict. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), there was a high level of violence in the country with many victims. The conflict generated 1.3 million internally displaced persons. Insecurity was exacerbated by terrorist groups targeting state symbols, including schools and health centres. According reports from the UN Secretary-General and from the Protection Cluster Mali, a body for the coordination of humanitarian actors chaired by UNHCR, attacks targeted schools, hospitals and the situation of civilians remained particularly precarious in the north and centre of the country, where civilians were particularly at risk of attacks, unlawful killings, obstacles to freedom of movement and gender-based violence. Serious violations against children were also recorded, the most widespread of which remained the recruitment and use of children by armed groups and around 5.1 million people, or nearly 20% of the national population, were in need of humanitarian assistance in Mali, the vast majority in the north and centre of the country. However, humanitarian access remained severely constrained, in particular due to the presence of explosive devices on access routes, the establishment of blockades by armed groups and the increasing use of armed drones that disrupt the supply chain and prevent the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Concerning the region of Bandiagara, the CNDA noted the exponential increase in violent incidents in this area in 2025, based on the most recent data from ACLED, UNHCR, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), finding that the Bandiagara region, bordering Burkina Faso, is experiencing a situation of indiscriminate violence of exceptional intensity. It was noted that the main roads in the region are difficult to access, in particular because of the presence of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and attacks on civilians and cattle abductions in the centre of the country have had a negative impact on humanitarian access to vulnerable populations.

Therefore, the CNDA considered that the applicant's mere presence in the Bandiagara region would expose her to serious threats to her life or person and granted subsidiary protection.