Fighting terrorism in the Sahel

In the Sahel, jihadist terrorism has found a breeding ground that has enabled it to establish itself and pose a security challenge to the fragile states of the region. The multi-faceted nature of the threat poses serious difficulties in terms of its exact definition and qualification, on the one hand, and the proposals for protection against it, on the other. The temptation is great for States to draw the line between necessary robust responses, and illegal ones that violate rights and freedoms and are supposedly effective. The fight on the military front is being waged with many shortcomings. The same applies to the legal and judicial sphere, where, under the guise of a suitable legislative and institutional framework, a legal and judicial arsenal and a worrying practice are being implemented, which violate the fundamental freedoms of suspects. Worse still, although in principle exceptional, it tends to endure and to be insidiously extended to non-terrorist areas, which represents a further challenge to the frail rule of law that more or less existed in the past.