Human Goods

Mauritania has only one railroad that stretches from the middle of the desert to the sea. And some cities are only reachable by driving miles down sandy beaches without roads, Kevin Bales reported in his book, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy.

But unlike most systems of slavery today, where people are usually enslaved and forced to work for a certain period of their lives, in Mauritania it is an institution more comparable to slavery of the American South.

While slavery has technically been illegal in the country since 1981, CNSNews.com quoted Anti-Slavery International’s claim that about 40 percent of the population are slaves. Rather than being acquired, sold, trafficked, and eventually discarded, Mauritanian slaves are born into slavery. Much like black Americans in the antebellum South, they are not just forced to work because of unjust economics– there is a deep-seated mentality of OWNERSHIP.

Mauritania elected new leadership in 2007, and in August enacted new anti-slavery legislation, IRIN reported. But it’s going to take more than creating laws, Anti-Slavery International’s Romana Cacchioli said. It’s going to need some active enforcement.

“We don’t eradicate slavery just by introducing a law,” Cacchioli told IRIN. At the very least, the new law acknowledges that slavery does exist in Mauritania.

On March 23, the Mauritanian slave advocacy groups SOS Slaves’ founder Boubacar Messaoud told the Washington Post that it’s going to take more than a political overhaul to change the culture of slavery– it will be a slow and arduous process of transforming the psyches of both slave-owners and slaves themselves.

“Slavery has been perpetuated in Mauritania by the persistence of tradition, distorted notions of religious obligation … Slaves are unaware that they are entitled to equal rights and don’t know how to seek justice,” Nora Boustany wrote in the Washington Post.

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