NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) — Nearly 2 million people will go to the polls Saturday in Mauritania, a vast desert nation in West Africa that positions itself as a strategic ally of the West in a region swept by coups d’état and violence but has been denounced for rights abuses.
President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, who is expected to win a second term, is a former army chief who came to power in 2019, following 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 legislative elections, winning 107 of 176 seats in the National Assembly.
Ghazouni faces seven opponents, including Biram Dah Abeidan anti-slavery activist running for the third time in a row, leaders of several opposition parties and a neurosurgeon.
The vote is taking place in a particularly tense regional climate, with Mauritania’s neighboring countries shaken 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 curbing migration and combating extremism, and has not suffered any attacks since 2011.
Earlier this year, the European Union announced a 210 million euro ($225 million) fund to help Mauritania crack down on people smugglers and stop migrant boats from taking off as the number of people arriving increases. attempt the dangerous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean from West Africa to Europe. increases markedly. He also announced an additional amount of 22 million euros ($23.5 million) for a new anti-terrorism battalion in Mauritania that will patrol the border with restless Mali.
Ghazouni took advantage of his electoral campaign to highlight Mauritania’s security commitments, a message that experts believe is directed first at military junta in neighboring countries and the Russian Wagner Group mercenaries present in the region, but also at jihadist groups, which have carried out incursions in Mauritanian villages.
″I advise anyone, whether an internal or external party, to think about destabilizing Mauritania or its territorial integrity,” he said during one of the campaign meetings.
But opposition candidates accused his government of corruption and cronyism. There was “a catastrophic management of the state” under Ghazouni’s government, said Biram Dah Abeid, an anti-slavery activist and Ghazouni’s main rival for the presidency.
Mauritania is rich in natural resources such as iron ore, copper, zinc, phosphate, gold, oil and natural gas. However, almost 60% of the population lives in poverty, according to the United Nations, working as farmers or employed in the informal sector. There are few economic opportunities for young people, and many try to cross the Atlantic to reach Europe.
“The Mauritanian regime has always lived off the plundering of wealth, the repression of populations and the use of forgeries,” Dah Abied told the Associated Press after a rally in Nouakchott, the country’s capital, where he was greeted with slogans “Zero Ghazouani” and “Viva Biram.”
Under Ghazoumi’s government, he said, “corruption is in full swing, along with the waste of state money.”
There is also no real separation of powers, said Dah Abied. “In reality, the judiciary is not independent and there is no independent legislative power,” he said.
The country has also been denounced for human rights violations, 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 Arab and Amazigh people, enslaved black people from the northwest of the Sahara.
Mauritania banned slavery in 1981, the last country in the world to do so. But the practice continues, rights groups said, with around 149,000 people in modern slavery in this nation of less than 5 million people, according to the 2023 Global Slavery Index.
Dah Abied is a descendant of slaves and has made combating the practice the cornerstone of his political career — and his life. He founded the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement, an anti-slavery group, and was arrested and imprisoned several times by Mauritanian authorities.
“My father was freed from slavery when he was in his mother’s womb,” he told the AP. But he later married a woman in slavery, Dah Abied said, and saw his children sold.
“My father was driven by the concern to fight against slavery and made it his legacy,” said Dah Abied. “I promised him I would fight slavery all my life and that’s what I’m doing.”
