Mody Samba Touré
Mody Samba Touré Testimony
I have personally documented cases of human rights violations in my capacity as a RDDH representative in the region of Kidal. As a result, I also became a target for opponents of human rights defenders.
Mody Samba Touré is the Secretary General of the Regional Union of Workers Kidal (URTKi), a member of the executive of the UNTM (National Union of workers of Mali), vice-president of the Réseau des Défenseurs des Droits de l'Homme (RDDH), and director of the National Coordination of Victims’ Associations in Mali – La coordination National des Associations des Victimes (CNAV. His work focuses on workers’ rights, documentation of human rights abuses and support for victims of the 2012 crisis. In 2014, he survived an assassination attempt. Since then, he has been forced to leave his home in Kidal (Northern Mali) and he has moved to Bamako. Together with the RDDH, he has been involved in advocating for the law on protection of HRDs and the Law for the Protection of Victims.
The security situation is fragile even though a peace agreement was signed between rival ethnic groups, Islamic militant groups and the current government in 2015. This instability severely affects the work and capacity of human rights defenders in Mali, as a climate of fear and insecurity is pervasive, especially in the North.
