A court in Mauritania has sentenced two slave owners to between 10 and 20 years in jail. Human rights activists have celebrated the ruling, which they say is the harshest anti-slavery decision in the country's history.
Thousands of enslaved people attend a protest in Nouakchott, Mauritania, to demand equal rightsImage: picture-alliance/ZUMA Wire/A. Dragaj
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The two cases were brought by former slaves in the northwestern town of Nouadhibou, activists said Friday.
A special court delivered its verdict on Wednesday, jailing a man for 20 years and a woman for 10 years, a judicial source said.
The man was found guilty of enslaving a family, including two children, while the woman was accused of holding three sisters as slaves.
"This is a big victory," Jakub Sobik of Anti-Slavery International told news agency Reuters. "The sentences are quite high and in line with the law, which is by no means a given."
In Mauritania, slavery's last bastion
In Mauritania, northwestern Africa, slavery is a fact of modern life. It's estimated that 10-20 percent of the country's 3.5 million people are still enslaved in a system rooted in ethnic discrimination.
Image: Robert Asher
Born into bondage
Schweda was born a slave in Mauritania's north-eastern Sahara along with her brother, Matallah. Overcoming virtually insurmountable odds, Matallah succeeded in freeing her and her nine children from slavery in March 2013.
Image: Safa Faki
Gritty capital
Twenty-five years of drought have transformed Mauritania from a nomadic to an urban society. The transition has not been easy, and with an unemployment rate of 40 percent, many Mauritanians survive on less than one dollar a day.
Image: Robert Asher
Making do
Shantytowns have sprung up on the outskirts of Nouakchott, where many former slaves, and those who left the drought-ridden countryside in search of opportunity, build homes from scrap metal and other found items.
Image: Robert Asher
Nationwide repression
Slavery in Mauritania is not unique to the countryside. Mbarka was born into slavery and lived her life serving a wealthy family in Nouakchott. She was freed in 2011 with the assistance of well-known anti-slavery activist Biram Abeid and IRA, the abolitionist organization he leads.
Image: Robert Asher
Bringing freedom
Messaoud Boubacar (left) of the anti-slavery NGO SOS Esclaves was instrumental in the freeing of Matallah (right) and the subsequent liberation of his sister and her nine children. Both are members of a 'slave caste,' known as the Hratine, and are descended from black African ethnic groups along the Senegal River who were subjugated by white Arab Berbers.
Image: Robert Asher
'Slave caste'
The Hratine often suffer from discrimination as they are at the very bottom of the social and economic ladder. There are no reliable figures for the number of Hratine. Human rights groups estimate that 10 to 20 percent of Mauritania's 3.5 million people are slaves.
Image: Robert Asher
Fatherless society
"In slavery fathers are irrelevant, their presence is not a factor," says Massaoud Boubacar of SOS Esclaves. "There is no role for the father, because the master owns the women, and when the women give birth the master owns the children, which he might sell or do with as he pleases."
Image: Safa Faki
Seeking justice
Eleven year-old Yarg (right) is one of the very few former slaves in Mauritania to have successfully had his former master convicted for the crimes committed against him. The man was sentenced to two years in prison for a crime that should have resulted in a five-to 10-year-minimum sentence.
Image: Robert Asher
Poverty gap
Mauritania is one of the richest countries in West Africa in terms of fish stocks and mineral wealth, but the riches earned from these resources have not been shared by the general populace.
Image: Robert Asher
Struggle for survival
Matallah's family - here his wife and child - live in grinding poverty, like many Hratine and former slaves. Despite the challenges, they have retained their dignity and an uncommon positivity that a brighter future may be in store for them.
Image: Robert Asher
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Slavery still common
Mauritania has one of the highest rates of slavery in the world, even though the practice was officially abolished there in 1981. According to the 2016 Global Slavery Index, 1 in 100 people still live as slaves in the conservative West African country.
Despite the law, descendants of certain ethnic groups are often born into slavery, working without pay as cattle herders and domestic servants.
In 2015, Mauritania adopted a new law declaring slavery a "crime against humanity" punishable by up to 20 years in jail. It also set up specialized anti-slavery tribunals in Nouadhibou, the capital Noukachott and in Nema in the southeast.
Few slave owners have been prosecuted, however, and activists complain the laws are rarely enforced. In 2016, the court in Nema jailed two men for five years over slavery charges.
The head of anti-slavery association SOS Esclavage, Boubacar Ould Messaoud, praised the latest rulings, but noted that there were a number of similar cases "pending for several years" at the three courts.
