Mauritanian authorities persist on maintaining a blackout on the practice of slavery in the country by denying access to international civil rights organizations, the latest of which is a US anti-slavery delegation that planned meetings with Mauritanian government officials and activists. The Mauritanian authorities for their part said that entry was denied because the program of the delegation was deemed “in breach of Mauritanian law”. “This program has not been planned in concertation with the (mauritanian) authorities as this is customary and not included as meetings with parties, well-targeted work on a particular calendar,” they said. Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981, the last country in the world to do so, but only made it a crime in 2007. Mauritanian authorities have resorted on multiple occasions to the arbitrary detention of the members of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA) accusing them of instigating riots and disrupting public order.

Source: The North Africa Journal September 11, 2017 14:37 UTC