2023 U.S. State Department
Human Rights Report
Executive Summary:
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including unjustified arrests of journalists and enforcement of a criminal blasphemy law to limit expression; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; serious government corruption; extensive gender-based violence, including domestic or intimate partner violence, sexual violence, female genital mutilation/cutting, and other forms of such violence; laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults, which were not enforced; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; and the existence of the worst forms of child labor.
​
Findings on Slavery:
(Civil registration / statelessness)
Child and women survivors of hereditary slavery were especially impacted, and some were unable to comply with legal requirements to establish paternity and obtain civil registration.
(Investigations of slavery cases)
Some human rights groups faced challenges or restrictions in conducting their work, particularly those investigating cases of slavery and slavery-related practices. For example, authorities sometimes denied NGOs access to prosecutors’ offices or to alleged victims while investigating possible slavery or slavery-related cases. On October 29, the NGO Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement organized a sit-in in front of the court of Aioun in Hodh El Gharbi to denounce court proceedings opened on land tenure related to hereditary slavery.
(Discrimination / links to slavery)
Racial and cultural tension and discrimination also arose from the geographic, linguistic, and cultural divides between Moors (Beydane and Haratine) – who, while historically representing a mix of Berber, Arab, and sub-Saharan descent, largely identified culturally and linguistically as Arab – and the sub-Saharan non-Arab minorities. Historically, the Beydane enslaved the Haratine population; Haratines continued to suffer from the legacy of centuries of slavery and present-day slavery practices. Beydane tribes and clans dominated positions in government and business far beyond their proportion of the population. As a group, the Haratines remained politically and economically weaker than the Beydane, although they represented the largest ethnocultural group in the country. The various sub-Saharan ethnic groups, along with the Haratines, remained underrepresented in leadership positions in government, industry, and the military.
Summary:
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrests; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including criminal blasphemy laws; serious government corruption; lack of investigation and accountability for gender-based violence including rape, domestic violence, female genital mutilation/cutting, sexual exploitation and abuse, and other forms of such violence; trafficking in persons, including continued existence of slavery and slavery-related practices.
Findings on Slavery:
Slavery and slavery-like practices, which typically flowed from ancestral master-slave relationships and involved both adults and children, continued. Although reliable data on the total number of slaves did not exist, the Global Slavery Index estimated in 2018 that hereditary slavery and slavery-like conditions affected a small but not insignificant portion of the rural and urban population. Enslaved persons suffered from traditional chattel slavery, including forced labor and sex trafficking. Human rights groups reported that masters coerced persons in slavery and slavery-like relationships to deny to human rights activists that such exploitative relationships existed.
​
Former victims of slavery and their descendants remained in a dependent status vis-a-vis their former slave masters due to a variety of factors, including obstacles faced in obtaining identification documents and civil registration for persons born out of wedlock, cultural traditions, a lack of marketable skills, poverty, and persistent drought. Some former victims of slavery and descendants were forced to revert to a de facto slave status by working for their former masters in exchange for some combination of lodging, food, and medical care. Some former victims of slavery reportedly continued to work for their former masters or others under exploitative conditions to retain access to land that they traditionally farmed. Although the law provides for distribution of land to the landless, including to former victims of slavery, authorities rarely enforced the law.
​
Former victims of slavery in subservient circumstances were also vulnerable to mistreatment. Women with children faced particular difficulties. Because they were particularly vulnerable, lacked the resources to live independently from their former masters, and had children who frequently lacked birth certificates or other documentation required for school attendance and basic services, they could be compelled to remain in a condition of servitude, performing domestic duties, tending fields, or herding animals without remuneration.
​
Some former victims of slavery were coerced into continuing to work for their former masters, who relied on adherence to religious teachings and a fear of divine punishment to keep these individuals enslaved. Former victims of slavery were often subjected to social discrimination and limited to performing low-skilled, manual labor.
​
Slavery, including forced labor and de facto slavery, were more prevalent in rural areas where educational levels were generally low or a barter economy still prevailed, and prevalent to a lesser degree in urban centers, including Nouakchott. The practices commonly occurred where there was a need for workers to herd livestock, tend fields, and do other manual or household labor, and in urban centers where young children, often girls, were retained as unpaid domestic servants.