thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 11:53 pm Post subject: The illegality of slavery in Mauritania... |
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...was established last month.
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In August, Mauritania's parliament voted to make slavery illegal.
It is a sad comment on the longevity and resilience of slavery that this occurred on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the British Empire. This is not the first time that slavery has been outlawed in Mauritania. It was first declared illegal in 1905 and as recently as 1981.
But previous abolitions have been ineffective. Although numbers are difficult to establish, the Mauritanian advocacy group, SOS Slavery, estimates that as many as 600,000 people - about 20 per cent of the population - in the arid West Africa country could be enslaved.
In the past, the Mauritanian government adopted an ambiguous stance. At times, it denied that slavery existed. Activists were unlikely to receive cooperation, and the use of the word 'slave' was discouraged. |
http://allafrica.com/stories/200709051079.html |
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