Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

‘We can now hope that these two boys will finally receive the justice they
deserve, following a complete failure of the justice system in Mauritania
to protect them and to challenge the current system of impunity favouring
slave owners,’ said Ruth Barry, MRG’s legal officer.
Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981, the last country in the world to
do so, and only made it a crime in 2007. Yet rights groups claim slavery
is hugely pervasive, with chattel slavery alone accounting for roughly
800,000 people out of a population of 3.5 million.
Hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of members of one family can be
beholden to another, anti-slavery activists in Mauritania claim, treated as
the property of their masters and forced to work for years without pay or
a single day off.
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Slaves tend to be predominantly Haratine – descendants of black ethnic
groups who have historically been enslaved by the Moor and Berber
majority – with male slaves herding cattle or working on farms. Women
usually carry out domestic tasks around the house, including raising the
children of the families to whom they are enslaved. Forced marriage is
common – as is physical abuse and rape – and any child born of such a
marriage becomes another slave, by default.
Despite current legislation criminalising slavery, laws are rarely enforced,
said Sarah Mathewson, Africa programme manager at Anti-Slavery
International, which helped take the original case to the Mauritanian court
in 2011. A regional court ruling in favour of the boys is likely to have a
significant impact on Nouakchott’s current approach to slavery, she added.
NOVEMBER 2016