Country: Mauritania

Group: Bambara

Finalized Date: 3/31/21

Team: Arisha Khan (lead), Abigail Pentecost, Ann Thomas, Samantha Bradford, Cammi Barbosa

There is strong evidencethat Bambara experienced forced displacement in Mauritania.

The Bambara, also called Bamana, were originally part of two powerful kingdoms in Western Africa called the Segu and Kaarta. In the 1800s, the kingdom fell to Muslim conquerors, who forced the people to convert to Islam (AfricaGuide,n.d.). The French then conquered the land that is now Mauritania, which only gained independence in 1960 (Minority Rights Group, n.d.).

A large drought that hit Mauritania in the late 1980s, introduced land reforms that emphasized the ethnic divide between the Arab populations, also called the Beydanes, and the black Africans, which included the Bambara (Parker, 1991). The drought that hit in the 1980s drove people towards the riverbanks where they could obtain easier access to water. But the Beydanes pushed black Africans away from the riverbanks. Due to the lack of clear borders and ethnic division, many people including the Bambara were forced away even though many had proof of citizenship (Parker, 1991). UNHCR has estimated that about 60-65,000 people have become refugees in Senegal and 10-15,000 in Mali (Minority Rights Group, n.d.). After 1994, many refugees were able to return to Mauritania, but ultimately left again because they could not get their lost properties (Minority Rights Group, n.d.). In 2010, a change in citizenship laws made it harder for black Africans to get citizenship.

The data quality is rated a 3 due to in-depth studies that have looked at the previous policies and situations that caused so many Bambara people to be forced away.

Sources

  1. AfricaGuide. Bambara People. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://www.africaguide.com/culture/tribes/bambara.htm
  2. Minority Rights Group. Black Africans. Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/black-africans/
  3. Parker, R. (1991). The Senegal-Mauritania Conflict of 1989: A Fragile Equilibrium. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 29(1), 155–171.