Mauritania

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Mauritania is located in West Africa and shares its frontiers with Senegal, Mali, Algeria, and Western Sahara. Its population of under 2.3 million inhabitants is an ethnic mosaic because of the country's situation between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. The Maur (Arab-Berber or "Moorish") community and the black African communities (Haalpulaaren, Soninke, and Wolof) were gathered together by the French colonial administration. There is a controversy as to which group is dominant, and there is no data available after the 1958 census which estimated that black Africans represent only 20 percent. The demographic weight of this latter community is now stronger, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimated that 30 percent of the population is Maur, 30 percent black African, and 40 percent mixed black-Maur.

Moktar Ould Daddah (1924–2003), a Maur, led the country to independence November 28, 1960. He founded a dominant single party, the Parti du Peuple Mauritanien, in 1964 and was overthrown by a military coup in July 1978. Mauritania has since had a succession of military leaders. Colonel Maaouya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya (b. 1943), army chief and prime minister from April 1981 to March 1984, seized power December 12, 1984. The political situation had then dramatically deteriorated: Ethnic conflicts intensified because of the increasing influence of the pan-Arabists movements that favored a pro-Arab

state. A part of the African community decided to organize itself and created the Forces de Libération Africaines de Mauritanie (FLAM) to claim greater political and social rights.

FLAM's clandestine activism caused the government, influenced by baathists and Nasserists, to react through a wave of arrests and imprisonments of the African activists and the execution of three African officers. Later, the 1989 conflict with Senegal led to mass deportation of African Mauritanians declared to be Senegalese. Subsequently, the international pressure due to this conflict and the country's support to Iraq during the first Gulf Crisis forced Ould Taya to begin a democratization process in 1991.

On April 12, 1991, a new constitution was adopted. The executive is dual: The president is elected for six years and appoints the prime minister and his ministers. The president holds the power to make regulations, promulgate law, sign and ratify treaties, organize a referendum, and dissolve the National Assembly.

The legislature is composed of a National Assembly and a Senate. The deputies are elected for five years by universal suffrage. Senators are elected for six-year terms via indirect suffrage. The Constitutional Council is composed of six members, each of whom serves for nine years. Islam is, in principle, the unique source of right.

Since 1992 the ruling party has been the Parti Républicain Démocratique et Social (PRDS), which is led by Ould Taya, who was elected in 1992 and then twice reelected, on December 12, 1997 and November 7, 2003. The opposition parties are in disarray and suffer seriously from repression. The elections are not really free and fair, the press is often censured, torture is used against opponents, and racial discrimination and slavery still remain, especially in the Moorish community. Former slaves and Mauritanian human rights associations fight the lack of human and political freedom and lead campaigns to denounce the regime inaction in Europe and in the United States.

Colonies and Colonialism; Shari'a.

Amnesty International. "Mauritania: A Future Free from Slavery?" Press release, November 7, 2002. <http://web.amnesty.org/library/ Index/ENGAFR380052002?open&of=EN GMRT>.

"Mauritania." CIA World Factbook. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2005. <http://www.cia.gov/cia/publicat ions/factbook/geos/mr.html>.

Marty, Marianne, "Mauritania: Political Parties, Neo-patrimonialism and Democracy," Democratization, vol. 9, no. 3, (autumn 2002):92–108.

Pazzanita, Anthony G., Historical Dictionary of Mauritania. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996.

Pazzanita, Anthony G., "Political Transition in Mauritania: Problems and Prospects." Middle East Journal, vol. 53, no. 1, (winter 1999):44–58.

U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Mauritania: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2003. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2003. <http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/ hrrpt/2003/29677.htm>.

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