Mauritania
Forced labour persists in Mauritania

afrol News, 28 May - Despite the 1981 Decree which abolished slavery, the lack of positive action to secure the release of slaves living and working for their traditional masters has meant that many Mauritanians continue to provide forced labour, according to a new report. 

The Mauritania report is part of a global study published by the UK-based organisation Anti-Slavery International. The study, which is presented at a special UN session on slavery held these days, concludes that the number of people forced into slavery around the world has risen to 27 million. Many of those are girls working as domestic servants and forced into sexual slavery. In Mauritania, on the other hand, forced labour has hundreds of years of history.

Virtually all cases of slavery in Mauritania concern individuals whose ancestors were enslaved many generations ago. "Birth continues to impose slave status on different ethnic groups, whereby they are viewed as slaves by some and as servants or family retainers by others," the report concludes. 

Former slaves in Mauritania typically work as herders of livestock, agricultural workers and domestic servants, but remain completely dependent on their traditional masters to whom they pass virtually all the money they earn or for whom they work directly in exchange for food and lodgings. 

Caste distinctions see some families in different ethnic groups assigned to a "slave caste" whereby they are subjected to a range of discriminatory practices, such as depriving them of the right to leave their property to their children upon death - a practice which keeps them on the bottom rung of the economic ladder. 

The authorities in Mauritania stress that slavery has been abolished. Anti-Slavery however notes that there is no penal sanction for employing forced labour, as required by Article 25 of ILO Convention No.29 on Forced Labour, and the prohibition against forced labour under the Labour Code "needs to be extended to cover all work relationships, even when they are not covered by a contract."

However, the central point of concern does not relate to the legal status of slavery in Mauritania, but to whether forced labour and servitude (what the Government refers to as "the vestiges of slavery") have been abolished in practice.

Reports from an NGO based in Mauritania, SOS-Esclaves (SOS-Slaves), show that individuals continue to be subjected to slavery and servitude. In its reports for 2000 and 2001, SOS-Esclaves cites several cases illustrating how difficult it is for people to escape from their traditional masters. 

One case involved a 13-year-old girl who escaped from an encampment where she and her mother lived and worked for a camel herder in Tagant. She went to the town of Atar to stay with her grandmother, but the police detained the girl and eventually returned her to the encampment, according to the SOS-Esclaves report. 

In May 2001, a human rights activist sent Anti-Slavery details of a case in which a traditional master seized money that was being sent to an enslaved family from abroad. When the family sought to challenge this they were beaten up by the police, the group reports. 

An article in the 'Washington Post' in October 2001 refers to the case of Mohamed who moved to Senegal with his brother after his family was freed from slavery. They worked there for several years and saved money to start their own business. However, when they returned to Mauritania their former master tracked them down and forced them to hand over all the money they had saved, claiming that everything they had belonged to him. Their former master still exercised powers of ownership over them, even though they were supposed to be free. 

According to Anti-Slavery, the cases cited above indicate that traditional masters are sometimes able to count on the support of law enforcement agencies to assist them in recapturing former slaves, in spite of the 1981 Decree.

SOS-Esclaves stresses that the documented cases represent the tip of the iceberg as most people held in servitude will not overcome the internalised set of values which makes people of slave descent believe that they should remain living with, and working for, the families which enslaved their parents or ancestors. Others submit to their current exploitation because they see no alternative options in terms of where they would live or work. In these circumstances physical coercion is rarely needed to prevent people from leaving. 

The British group says that pro-active work also was required on the part of the government "to end both the economic dependency of such people on their masters, and their psychological conditioning which may lead them to resign themselves to a life of servitude. Measures also need to be taken to prevent acts of discrimination against individuals or communities that are still categorised by many Mauritanians as having slave status."

Although the government established the Commissariat for Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation and Integration in May 1999, this Commissariat is not known to have initiated any action focused specifically on slaves or people of slave descent. SOS-Esclaves has also noted that the Commissariat has not responded to or taken action on the complaints it has submitted relating to slavery.

The slavery and forced labour issue is widely seen as taboo in Mauritania and speaking about it in public is perceived as undermining national interests. The government firmly holds that slavery in Mauritania is abolished by law an in practical terms. "No one [in Mauritania] is allowed to own a human being," a government official recently told the 'Washington Times'.

Even independent trade union leader Abdallahi Ould Mohammed in a recent interview avoided the issue, saying it was a problem of the past. "Former slaves who left the countryside" now lived in "poverty belts around the towns," he took as evidence. 

Also in politics, the slavery issue is taboo. Anti-Slavery expressed concern about the government's decision, at the beginning of 2002, to ban the political party Action Pour le Changement (Action for Change). Action for Change has many Mauritanians descended from slaves among its members and supporters and fielded candidates for the first time in the 2001 parliamentary elections. The party was banned because the government claimed it promoted tribalism by focusing on one people's needs.

The head of Action for Change, Messaoud Boulkheir, was formerly the leader of El Hor (Freedom) which campaigned in the 1970s for an end to slavery in Mauritania, leading to its abolition in 1981. Messaoud Boulkheir has regularly spoken out about the continued existence of slavery in Mauritania and Action for Change's party platform refers specifically to slavery and "condemns the government for its silence and complicity in this phenomenon". This follows the imprisonment in 1998 of four NGO workers, including the leader of SOS-Esclaves, who were active in fighting slavery. 

- The current ban on Action for Change has the unfortunate effect of reinforcing the impression that the government is hostile to those working to eradicate forced labour in Mauritania and promote the interests of those descended from slaves, Anti-Slavery concludes. 

The group recommends the Mauritanian government to develop a national action plan in cooperation with ILO to release and rehabilitate all those held in conditions of forced labour or servitude. "This plan should include public information campaigns regarding the law, access to education programmes and the provision of economic alternatives to the victims."

Sources: Based on Anti-Slavery and afrol archives

© afrol News.    You can contact us at mail@afrol.com