NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) — Nearly 2 million people will go to the polls Saturday in Mauritania, a vast desert country in West Africa that is positioning itself as a strategic ally of the West in a region ravaged by coups and violence but is denounced for rights violations.
President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, widely expected to win a second term, is a former army chief who came to power in 2019 after the first democratic transition in the country’s history. He is also the current President of the African Union.
Last year, his El Insaf party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections, winning 107 of the 176 seats in the National Assembly.
Ghazouni will face seven opponents, including Biram Dah Abeidan anti-slavery activist who is running for office for the third time in a row, leaders of several opposition parties and a neurosurgeon.
The vote takes place in a particularly tense regional climate, with Mauritania’s neighbors rocked by military coups and jihadist violence. Mauritania, one of the most stable countries in the Sahel region, has been hailed as a key partner in reducing migration and combating extremism, and has not suffered a single attack since 2011.
Earlier this year, the European Union announced a €210 million fund to help Mauritania tackle people smugglers and stop migrant boats from taking off, as the number of people attempting the dangerous Atlantic Ocean crossing from West Africa to Europe increases to make is increasing sharply. It also announced an additional 22 million euros ($23.5 million) for a new anti-terrorism battalion in Mauritania that will patrol the border with restive Mali.
Ghazouni used his election campaign to highlight Mauritania’s security commitments, a message that experts say is primarily addressed to the military juntas in neighboring countries and the Russian Wagner group mercenaries present in the region, but also to the jihadist groups that have committed terrorist acts. raids on Mauritanian villages.
“I advise anyone, internal or external, not to think about destabilizing Mauritania or its territorial integrity,” he said during one of the campaign rallies.
But opposition candidates accused his government of corruption and clientelism. There was “catastrophic management of the state” under Ghazouni’s rule, said Biram Dah Abeid, an anti-slavery activist and Ghazouni’s main rival in the quest for the presidency.
Mauritania is rich in natural resources such as iron ore, copper, zinc, phosphate, gold, oil and natural gas. Yet, according to the United Nations, almost 60% of the population lives in poverty, working as farmers or in the informal sector. There are few economic opportunities for young people, and many try to cross the Atlantic Ocean to reach Europe.
“The Mauritanian regime has always lived by plundering wealth, repressing its people and using counterfeiting,” Dah Abied told The Associated Press after a rally in Nouakchott, the country’s capital, where he was greeted with slogans “Zero Ghazouani”. and “Long live Biram.”
Under Ghazoumi’s rule, he said, “corruption is in full swing, along with the waste of state money.”
There is also no real separation of powers, Dah Abied said. “In reality, justice is not independent and there is no independent legislature,” he said.
The country has also been indicted for human rights abuses, with the continued existence of slavery casting a long shadow over its history. For centuries, the country’s economic and political elite, made up of Arabs and Amazighs, enslaved black people from the northwestern Sahara.
Mauritania banned slavery in 1981, the last country in the world to do so. But the practice continues, rights groups say, with around 149,000 people in modern slavery in this country of less than 5 million people, according to the 2023 Global Slavery Index.
Dah Abied is a descendant of slaves and made the fight against this practice the cornerstone of his political career – and of his life. He founded the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement, an anti-slavery group, and has been arrested and imprisoned several times by Mauritanian authorities.
“My father was freed from slavery while in his mother’s womb,” he told the AP. But then he married a woman who was in a situation of slavery, Dah Abied said, and he saw his children being sold.
“My father was driven by a concern to fight against slavery, and he made it his legacy,” Dah Abied said. “I promised him I would fight against slavery all my life, and that’s what I’m doing.”
