Slavery In Mauritania

MAURITANIA

The Master and the Mother

Slavery is alive and well in Mauritania.

Unfortunately, there is a very personal reason for that.

“People think that God created them to be slaves,” Brahim Bilal Ramdhane, an anti-slavery activist in the West African country, toldthe Thomson Reuters Foundation, speaking of exploited workers whose families have served “masters” for generations.

Technically, slavery ended in Mauritania in 1981. It was criminalized in 2007. Yet the Global Slavery Index estimates that around 90,000 people, or 2 percent of Mauritania’s population, are enslaved. And only a few people have ever been prosecuted for holding their fellow citizens in servitude.

As the Guardian explained, the institution stems from long-held social structures in a country that straddles the divide between Muslim North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Light-skinned Arab “white Moors” own dark-skinned African “black Moors.” The former tend to live in the city, while the latter often work like indentured servants in the countryside, handing over the fruits of their labor to their masters.

It’s a brutal existence. CNN told a story of a master leaving the infant daughter of a slave he had raped out to die, reasoning that the woman could work harder without the child. When the mother discovered her dead baby, she asked if she could take a break to give the child a proper burial. Her master told her to get back to work.

“Her soul is a dog’s soul,” the master said to the mother.

The government admits that slavery exists but denies that it is widespread. Activists like Ramdhane face jail or worse for calling out leaders who turn a blind eye to bondage. Around 150 human rights defenders are now sitting in jail, the Associated Press reported. Opposition leader and anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid is among them.

“To speak out about slavery in Mauritania is to risk losing your liberty” was the headline in the Independent.

Mauritania’s lack of progress in tackling slavery led US President Donald Trump to end trade benefits for Mauritania starting next year, wrote Quartz. A US trade official said Mauritania will need to “eradicate forced labor and hereditary slavery” to regain those benefits, which include around more than $60 million of imports annually to the US – a significant sum of foreign cash for an impoverished country.

The Mauritanian government reacted angrily, saying Trump wasn’t treating Saudi Arabia so harshly despite the kingdom’s human rights abuses. “Would Trump have taken this decision if he was expecting a $110 billion arms contract with us?” government spokesperson Mohamed Ould Maham asked.

Maybe not. But don’t change the subject, Maham.