Country: Mauritania

Group: Wolof

Date: 3/31/2021

Team: Therin Carr (lead), Mahad Alam, Thomas Chia, Ethan Pelland, Maya Shrikant

There is strong, reliable evidence that the Mauritanian government forced thousands of Wolof people away from their lands over the course of the country’s history.

              The Wolof people are an ethnic minority within Mauritania often classified as black Mauritanians, and tensions between black Mauritanians and Beydanes (Arabic-Berber Mauritanians) originated prior to the country’s independence (HRW, 1990). Mauritania and Senegal agreed to repatriate their citizens in 1989 to avoid escalation of a border conflict (Fleischman, 1994, p.17). The majority Beydane government began systematically expelling black ethnic groups by claiming they were Senegalese natives, with the intention of decreasing their population and political power (HRW, 1990; Fleischman, 1994, pp.40). The most conservative estimates indicate at least 60,000 refugees fled to neighboring countries such as Senegal and Mali (MRG, 2017). Mass expulsions ended after 1990, but the government often seized the land of refugees, leaving them unable to regain their property (Fleischman, 1994, p.142). Mauritania passed amendments that removed birth rights and restricted nationality status in 2010, and re-integration efforts in 2007 and 2012 were largely unsuccessful (MRG, 2017). Many black Mauritanians refugees are still stateless.

              Although there was abundant and credible evidence that black Mauritanians were forced away from their country, there is very little data on the Wolof people that distinguishes them from other groups. The quality of the data is rated at 2 of 3.

Sources

  1. Fleischman, J. (1994). Mauritania’s Campaign of Terror: State-Sponsored Repression of Black Africans. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/MAURITAN944.PDF  
  2. Human Rights Watch. (1990). Human Rights Watch World Report 1989 – Mauritania. Retrieved from https://www.refworld.org/docid/467bb4931e.html
  3. Minority Rights Group. (2017).  Black Africans. Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/black-africans/