On 8 and 9 June 2021, the Max Planck Foundation conducted a two-day workshop for the Constitutional Court of Mali. This workshop, which was organised following the official signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Constitutional Court of Mali and the Foundation on 21 March 2021, was the first in a series of planned activities focusing on electoral law and litigation aiming to strengthen the capacities of the Constitutional Court of Mali in view of the general elections, which will close the ongoing transitional process in Mali in 2022.
The workshop was formally inaugurated by HE Amadou Ousmane Toure, President of the Constitutional Court of Mali, who welcomed the cooperation between the Foundation and the Court and stressed the importance of the topic of the workshop. The event lasted for two days during which Foundation Experts delivered technical presentations covering key areas of electoral law and litigation under a comparative lens, such as law of evidence and powers of constitutional courts in electoral matters. Presentations were also held by three judges of the Constitutional Court of Mali to provide an overview of the framework and challenges of Malian electoral law. These presentations fostered a conducive climate and participatory atmosphere for constructive debates and lively discussions throughout the workshop.
In his closing statement, the President of the Constitutional Court of Mali expressed the judges’ satisfaction over the workshop’s content and underlined the relevancy of the topics covered for the Constitutional Court. Following on from this first successful event, the Foundation has already started preparations for the next workshop with the Constitutional Court, which will once again focus on a thematic request made by the Court.
The workshop was the first in a series of activities with the Constitutional Court of Mali under the Foundation project, “Support to the Transitional Process in Mali”, generously funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.