The Abolition Institute
  • Slavery in Mauritania
    • Facts
    • Faith Traditions Against Slavery
    • Aichana Abeid Boilil Awards
    • U.S. State Department Report
    • U.S. Trafficking Report
    • Literature
    • Press
  • Policy
    • Recommendations
    • Congressional Leaders on Slavery
  • Blog
  • About
    • Meet Our Team
    • Photo Gallery
    • Abolition in Illinois
    • Contact Us
  • Donate
    • The Impact of Your Donations
    • 501(C)3 Tax Exemption Statement
  • 2019 Award

Abolition Institute Blog

The Country Where Slavery is Still Normal

6/28/2011

0 Comments

 
By Max Fisher at the Atlantic:

Mauritania could have been designed to be a modern-day slave state, so perfect are the conditions for entrenching this cruel habit. An artificial creation of the end of colonialism, the European-drawn, largely arbitrary borders cut across ethnic groups that are black African, black Arab or Berber, and white Arab or Berber. French colonialism rapidly centralized much of what was once a heavily nomadic population, forcing ethnic groups that had once been separated by geography to coexist and to compete.

In the 1970s, widespread droughts forced many of the country's farmers and rural peoples into cities, creating new classes of destitute and jobless citizens who have been unable to adapt to this new reality. Because 50 percent of the economy is still based in agriculture, urban job opportunities are scarce. Lacking other options, faced with an economy unable to help them and an ethnic hierarchy that tells them they are worth less than their white-faced or Arab counterparts, they become slaves.

Many of the displaced were children in need of a guardian. Many of those guardians became masters. The cycle repeated in the late 1980s, when an estimated 70,000 black Africans were expelled from the country, leaving behind masses of children, many of whom were enslaved.

​Slavery is self-perpetuating. A first-generation slave is a desperate man, woman, or, most often, child who accepts degradation in exchange for survival. A second-generation slave knows nothing else. Though Mauritania's post-colonial struggles have perpetuated and entrenched the practice, it began generations earlier.

As in Saudi Arabia, which did not emancipate its slaves until 1967, slavery was a function of extreme wealth discrepancy that divided along ethnic lines between Arab and African, skin color lines between white and black, and often between sedentary and nomadic communities, the latter of which lacked recourse for recovering its children abducted into slavery.

​In Mauritania, the practice began with 8th century Arab colonists who took black slaves. As the number of slaves increased -- first by the ravages of European colonialism, then by the crises of the 1970s and 1980s -- the practice became the norm, which made it both too pervasive and too accepted for legislation to simply overturn.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    • CNN Profiles the Abolition Institute here
    • Forbes Profiles the Abolition Institute here
    • ​Turning Point For Slavery's Last Stronghold
    • Walking Free in Mauritania

    Archives

    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    February 2017
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    November 2014
    August 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    August 2012
    June 2012
    March 2012
    June 2011
    August 2001

    Categories

    All
    Abolition Institute
    Awards
    Birame Ould Dah
    Boubacar Messaoud
    Fundraising
    Global Slavery Index
    Hope
    IRA
    Land Reform
    Mauritania
    Media
    Press Release
    Reports
    Slavery

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Slavery in Mauritania
    • Facts
    • Faith Traditions Against Slavery
    • Aichana Abeid Boilil Awards
    • U.S. State Department Report
    • U.S. Trafficking Report
    • Literature
    • Press
  • Policy
    • Recommendations
    • Congressional Leaders on Slavery
  • Blog
  • About
    • Meet Our Team
    • Photo Gallery
    • Abolition in Illinois
    • Contact Us
  • Donate
    • The Impact of Your Donations
    • 501(C)3 Tax Exemption Statement
  • 2019 Award