This month, our focus turns to Mauritania, a country where those who denounce slavery, racial discrimination, and injustice pay a heavy price for their courage.
In recent months, a troubling series of arrests has targeted activists, journalists, and whistleblowers, many of them members of the Initiative pour la Résurgence du mouvement Abolitionniste (IRA), an organisation at the forefront of the fight against slavery and racial discrimination in the country.
In February 2026, IRA members went public with allegations concerning the enslavement of Nouha Mohamed, an 11-year-old girl from the Haratine community allegedly held in domestic servitude in Nouakchott. Rather than focusing solely on the alleged perpetrators, authorities turned their attention to those who had spoken out.
Journalist and IRA communications officer Warda Souleymane was arrested after posting on social media about police violence against protesters who had gathered to demand accountability. She remains detained on charges of spreading « false information. » IRA member Lemrabet Mahmoud was arrested days later for denouncing her arrest online and sentenced to one year in prison with a suspended sentence. Six further activists and whistleblowers, including Lalla Vatma and Rachida Saleck, were subsequently arrested, charged with « false information » and « criminal association, » and transferred to Nouakchott’s central prison.
Their lawyers have contested the legal basis of these prosecutions, arguing they are designed to criminalise those who exposed a slavery case, not to protect the victim.
Also, in November 2025, nine activists, including women’s rights defender Dieynaba Ndiom, were violently arrested during a peaceful commemoration of the 1990 Inal massacre, in which dozens of Black Mauritanian soldiers were executed or disappeared by authorities. That massacre marked the beginning of decades of persecution of the Black Mauritanian community, which continues to demand justice and reparation to this day.
Although slavery was abolished in Mauritania in 1981 and criminalised as a crime against humanity in 2015, civil society organisations continue to document ongoing practices of enslavement affecting primarily the Haratine community.
ProtectDefenders.eu stands with the defenders, journalists, and whistleblowers targeted in Mauritania and calls on the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those detained for their human rights work, drop all charges, and put an end to the judicial harassment of those fighting against slavery and discrimination.
