Events of 2015

Despite being legally abolished for decades, slavery persists in Mauritania to this day, primarily perpetrated by members of Mauritania's White Moor ethnic group against ethnic Haratines. In 2014 the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Mutuma Ruteere, indicated that an estimated 50 per cent of Haratines live in conditions of slavery. The system is largely hereditary: those born into slavery are under direct control of their 'masters', receive no pay for their work, are not permitted to leave and are vulnerable to abuses, including denial of access to basic services, forcible separation from family, ill-treatment and sexual assault. Due largely to failures in enforcement by police, judicial officials and others in authority, a 2007 law criminalizing slavery and slavery-like practices resulted in only one conviction. In that case the sentence handed down fell below the minimum specified by law and the appeal against its leniency is still pending four years later, while the convicted slave owner has been freed on bail.

In September a new law was approved, stiffening penalties for perpetrators and officials who fail to investigate claims of slavery. It also broadened the definition of slavery to include practices such as indentured servitude and created the opportunity for human rights organizations meeting certain criteria to bring cases on behalf of victims. However, there is still no mechanism for victims to bring a civil suit against perpetrators or for the level of support and compensation to victims recommended in 2010 by Gulnara Shahinian, then Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery. The new law's success will, like the old, depend on the extent to which it is enforced.

Those who fight to raise awareness of slavery and other forms of marginalization affecting Haratines continue to come under official pressure. Among those targeted is anti-slavery activist Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, convicted with two others in January 2015 and sentenced to two years' imprisonment on various charges, including taking part in an unauthorized rally and belonging to an illegal organization. All three were arrested in November 2014 for attending a peaceful protest to raise awareness of land rights for former slaves and other Haratines. The decision provoked protests in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, prompting police to use tear gas to disperse supporters who condemned the ruling.

On the occasion of Mauritania's independence day, at the end of November, President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz publicly denied that slavery persisted in the country and accused rights groups of 'sowing hatred and division' between ethnic groups for addressing events around the expulsion and exclusion of tens of thousands of black Mauritanians in the late 1980s.

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