Can a democracy exist without the right to disagree?
Originally published on Global Voices
Demonstrations in the Sahel: (left) Mali, (center) Niger, and (right) Burkina Faso. Screenshots via YouTube.
This post is part of Global Voices’ September 2026 Spotlight series, “Protest in Democracy.” With this Spotlight, we seek to explore the many forms of protest, the tactics states use to delegitimize and suppress them, and the complex relationship between protest and democracy. You can support this coverage by donating here.
In the countries of the central Sahel, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, military juntas present themselves as the voices of restored popular sovereignty. At the same time, 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. What becomes of the right to protest when those in power claim to embody the very people on whose behalf the protests are being held?
On the night of August 28–29, 2026, heavy gunfire and explosions rang out in Niamey, Niger. An attempted military mutiny targeting the presidency, the airport, and national television was repelled by General Abdourahamane Tiani’s regime, with the support of Russian forces. The incident served as yet another reminder of the fragility of the military regimes that have been in power in the Sahel since 2020 and the ease with which every upheaval — whether it comes from within the military or from civil society — is then used to justify a further crackdown on civic space.
On June 30, 2026, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights announced the permanent closure of its office in Burkina Faso, after authorities had suspended its activities in February. On July 29, 2026, CIVICUS added Burkina Faso to its international watch list, documenting at least 1,174 civil society organizations that had been suspended or dissolved since the beginning of the year.
Three countries, one institutional path
Before the military took power, thousands of citizens had already taken to the streets in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger to protest poor governance, insecurity, and corruption. 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 also followed by a military statement emphasizing national sovereignty.
In all three cases, the military then set about methodically dismantling the pluralism they had promised to revitalize.
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. These were the first opposition demonstrations in Bamako since 2020, according to a regional situation report. 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 also 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.
As of September 30, 2022, political activities were suspended in Burkina Faso, 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. When asked about this situation, Binta Sidibé Gascon, President of the Kisal Observatory, told Human Rights Watch:
La dissolution massive des organisations de la société civile n’est que le dernier acte de la junte du Burkina Faso pour faire taire la dissidence et éviter toute analyse de son bilan peu reluisant en matière de droits humains. Cette décision renforce un climat de peur qui paralyse l'activité civique indépendante.
The mass dissolution of civil society organizations is merely the latest move by the Burkina Faso junta to silence dissent and prevent any scrutiny of its dismal human rights record. This decision reinforces 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 in turn 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. These include 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?
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: 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 being enforced by decree, without parliamentary oversight or constitutional review.
This situation raises a simple question that is rarely asked so directly: If part of the population supports the new authorities, does that mean those who criticize them are no longer part of the people?
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., believes that:
I think the crackdown is most severe in Burkina Faso, but in all three countries, there’s been a major setback. Quality media outlets, with history and tradition, are 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. 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. This serves 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, 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, 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.
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, 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, 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”?