Abstract

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania faces a complex human rights crisis defined by the intersection of descent-based slavery and catastrophic climate change. This paper argues that these phenomena are not merely parallel issues but are interconnected through a gendered and racialized hierarchy that relegates women of slave ancestry—the Haratin—to the lowest tier of social and legal existence. While environmental degradation and extreme environmental events like the interdecadal drought of the 1960s-1980s have disrupted traditional nomadic structures, they have also forced the evolution of slavery from physical bondage to “mental bondage” and economic remittance. By examining pre-colonial gender shifts, the legal weaponization of zina (the Islamic legal term for unlawful sexual intercourse), and the linguistic hegemony of Arabic, this research explores how Haratin women navigate a landscape of “extreme dependence”. Ultimately, it highlights the agency of these women, who utilize entrepreneurial networks to disrupt generational cycles of stagnation and redefine their status in the 21st century.

Introduction

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania in northwest Africa is alleged to have one of the highest incidences of slavery anywhere in the world today (Walk Free, 2023). Slavery is a highly adaptive and resilient institution that is strictly governed by socially and religiously sanctioned gender roles that exponentially increase the vulnerability of women. In Mauritania, the resilience of this institution is maintained through a dual framework: the environmental volatility of the Sahara Desert and a rigid social stratification system that leverages tradition and religion to validate servitude.

This paper offers an intersectional analysis of how Black women of slave ancestry, Haratin, navigate survival in one of the world’s most enigmatic societies. It moves beyond simple narratives of racism to examine the structural mechanisms of control—ranging from maternal descent-based status to the lack of legal documentation—that keep the Haratin in a state of “extreme dependence” even in the absence of physical shackles. By situating these struggles within the context of the 20th-century droughts and contemporary climate migration, the following sections detail how the environmental crisis have acted as a catalyst for the institutional transformation of Mauritanian slavery.

Gender in Pre-Colonial Africa

The composition of gendered institutions across contemporary African society is markedly different reality than what existed in pre-colonial Africa. In virtually all African societies today, the roles and status of women have been subordinated to those of men. In the West, much research has been advanced to show the impact of European colonialism in Africa. But it should not be forgotten that the Arab encounter, which brought both conquest and the Islamic faith centuries before the arrival and incursion of Europeans beyond the Sahara, likewise subverted traditional African societies and the status of women, relegating them to the subsidiary position in the gender hierarchy.

This was not just a cultural shift. It was the structural erasure of female political agency. Pre-colonial Africa was free of the “hierarchical associations and binary oppositions in which the male implie(d) privilege and the female subordination,” a reality that has always existed in the West (Oyewumi, 2011: 99). Women possessed direct access to the spiritual and temporal realms, where they could serve in spiritual capacities as priestesses or custodians of fetishes and relics, and they could ascend to political power in their own right. Schraeder (2003: 44) records, “parallel authority structures allowed men and women to exercise authority over their own sex and activities. There was also recognition that men could best make decisions about men’s affairs, as could women about their own conditions.”

Historical Basis of Slavery in Mauritania

Slavery has a long recorded history in Mauritania, with written accounts dating back over a millennium. Slavery is manifested ancestrally in what is known as descent-based slavery, “a situation where people are born into slavery because their ancestors were captured into slavery and their families have ‘belonged’ to the slave-owning families ever since. Slave status is passed down the maternal line” (Anti-Slavery International, 2019). Narratives of slavery in Mauritania today overwhelmingly point to the issue of racism, whereby the socially, politically, and economically dominant mixed Arab-Imazighen (“Berber”) population, known as Bidhan, enslave people from the country’s multiethnic Black societies. However, slavery has been a feature among the country’s various ethnic groups, both interracially and intraracially.

During the long epoch of trading, gender was always at the forefront of consideration by enslavers. Men were typically forced to work as messengers, porters, or soldiers, while women were often expressly captured to serve as concubines to nobles and prominent men. Segal (2001: 4) critically observed that slavery in these regions was,

“primarily a form of consumption rather than a factor of production. The most telling evidence of this is found in the gender ratio. The Atlantic Trade shipped overall roughly two males for every female. Among black slaves traded in Islam across the centuries, there were roughly two females to every male.”

Contemporary apologists for slavery in Mauritania cite the Mukhtasar Khalil, a 14th-century compendium by Egyptian scholar Khalil ibn Ishaq al-Jundi, as sanctioning the institution (K. Esseissah, personal communication, December 15, 2018). The Mukhtasar is a compendium of legal treatises on a variety of subjects, including exchanges in and treatment of slaves. Ajetunmobi (1986: 276) argues that the Mukhtasar is significant “because it is an abridgement of early writings in Islamic jurisprudence.” This view has perpetuated through the centuries, cementing it with tradition and identity and further complicating the ties people have to the institution as well as their legality.

Slavery and Climate Change

The institution of slavery in Mauritania is inextricably linked to the country’s precarious geographic position. Mauritania lies fully within both the Sahara Desert and the Sahel, a biogeographic, ecoclimatic, and cultural zone of transition. Approximately three-fourths of the republic has a desert or semi-desert climate which presents one of the harshest and most volatile environments in the world. The current social and institutional composition of Mauritania as a modern state is rooted in the interdecadal drought that struck the country between the late-1960s and mid-1980s.

One of the most illuminating outcomes of the drought was the transformation of the population’s livelihoods and lifestyles. Approximately 75% of the country’s population lived nomadic lifestyles after the country achieved independence from France in 1960. A 1998 census, conducted shortly after the end of the drought, revealed that this number had diminished to just 12% (Malainine, 2001). The maintenance of livestock that supported mobility had either became too impractical or too costly, and climate migrants needed to take advantage of the relief services that larger cities and towns offered.

The drought fundamentally altered the consumptive nature of slavery. Climatic stressors transformed enslaved labor from a rural asset into a liability, necessitating urban migration. Maintaining slaves in sustained drought conditions became a liability rather than a marker of wealth, because the presence of slaves equated to more mouths to feed. However, rather than engaging in formal manumission, many enslavers simply transitioned to a model of remittance-based slavery. Slaves were sent away from rural settings to larger cities and towns to engage in hard-currency labor such as construction, domestic work, shop keeping, and other informal trades. Monies earned would be remitted back to the enslaver through agreements with business owners and project managers.

Navigating Slavery, Gender, and Climate Change in Mauritania

In Mauritania, womanhood is not a monolithic experience. It is bifurcated by the rigid intersections of caste and legal status. For enslaved Haratin women, the pursuit of agency is obstructed by a trifecta of systemic rape, legal disenfranchisement, and linguistic isolation. A dual social and cultural stratification ladder functions by gender and race, positioning women on a lower rung than men, and Black Mauritanians of all ethnic groups beneath the Bidhan.

Women tend to remain victims in higher proportion than men on account of their ties to their children. Women have been able to escape slavery, though rarely with (all of) their children. For those who remain, the prospect of separation from their children is more daunting than their continued servitude, degradation, and violation. Since it is women who are tasked with rearing children, the practical logistics of leaving the familiarity of their master’s abode is far more complex than it is for men. Considering the geography of Mauritania, an enslaved mother in a desert domicile would have to risk navigating the Sahara Desert, perhaps aimlessly, without food, water, or shelter for herself and her children for an indefinite amount of time. That prospect alone is enough to keep many women arrested in the psychological coercion and structural dependency that persist in the absence of physical restraint.

Mauritania was founded as the world’s second “Islamic republic”, and its judicial and penal code are rooted in the Shari’a. Since independence, every government has upheld and reiterated the Islamic faith as one of the key markers of unity and identity. Nevertheless, enslaved persons – and women in particular – are often prevented for practicing their faith. Writing about the nexus of slavery and faith, Esseissah (2016: 12) notes, “Until recently, slaves were not encouraged, sometimes not even allowed, to go to al-mahdara (local Islamic school) where they could learn basic Islamic rules. Most of them barely know how to perform basic Islamic obligations such as ablution, daily prayers, fasting…let alone understand that their enslavement is not Islamic.”

It is perhaps this point that best explains the prevalence of slavery in Mauritania today. While the physical bondage of slaves is largely a thing of the past, the enslaved today are kept in a state of mental bondage. Descent-based slavery differs drastically from the chattel variety. “The Mauritanian system is in many ways a product of what’s referred to locally as ‘extreme dependence,’ in which enslaved people and their families, deprived of education and paid work, maintain ties to their master’s in order to survive.” (Kestler-D’Amours, 2017)

But women are not merely passive in letting the environment – and men – determine their fate. The https://www.un.org/en/ Development Programme (UNDP, 2019) found that women do not hesitate to enter the formal economy, taking up jobs or starting their entrepreneurial enterprises to supplement their income when their agricultural ventures failed or were insufficient in covering the needs of other expenses such as additional foodstuffs, healthcare, and clothing.

This corresponds with Wiley’s (2018) research exclusively among Haratin women in the town of Kankossa, where 44% of households were run by women. Wiley (2018) discovered that Haratin women there established formal gift and economic exchange networks to aid each other in general hardship or big ceremonial events such as weddings and funerals. Jones (2019: 79) says, “This system is of particular importance when considering the fact that Haratin women are largely unable to secure formal bank loans due to their financial instability and low creditworthiness.”

Perhaps most importantly, these strategies aid in redefining the rigid social stratification system that places the Haratin on the lowest rung of the Mauritanian social hierarchy. Wiley (2018: 4, 12) says, “Haratin women today emphasize the importance of achieved attributes, including wealth, respect, and industriousness…[they] draw on these neoliberal ideologies to revalue their own labor, claiming working hard as an important practice that makes them valuable modern citizens.” Whereas dirty clothes were once a marker of their slave status, today they symbolize female industriousness, a commitment to earning a living to support their families, and providing their children with opportunities they never had such as the possibility to receive a formal education. In doing so, Haratin women are altering the stratification system by establishing the foundation for the upward financial and social trajectory of their progeny.

Haratin women face various barriers to education and a sustainable livelihood. Haratin liberated from slavery almost always lack official documentation, and are therefore barred from pursuing formal education, employment, or access to the meagre resources and subsidies imparted by the state since they are unable to confirm their identity and citizenship. This constitutes an element of structural invisibility, whereby the Haratin are subjects of the state, but are not officially recognized as such because of the state’s own failure or unwillingness to aggressively criminalize slavery. Even literate Haratin women often lack the financial resources to further their education. Where social networks and entrepreneurial creativity are lacking, they find themselves all but confined to slavery by another name which keeps them heavily entrenched in systemic, cyclical, and abject generational poverty.

Furthermore, one cannot begin to analyze the state of Mauritanian women without overlooking the issue of language and language policies in the country. Because women are least likely to receive formal education, their opportunities for learning particular trades, information, and simple familiarization with global affairs is drastically reduced if they lack fluency in Arabic, the official language of government and business. They are unable to actively participate in their nation’s development, nor can they familiarize themselves with or use their nation’s laws to protect their interests. Verhoeven (2015: 22-23, emphasis in original) critically notes, “Structural choices exclude specific population groups from power and keep them permanently marginalised, so that when a natural hazard occurs, it merely pushes them over the edge, but does not cause the tragedy itself.”

Rape against both enslaved and free women is believed to be widespread. As with slavery, the number of female victims is unquantifiable as a result of the conflation of religion and social customs. Women and girls are reluctant to report abuse because local customs uphold zina, the concept of unlawful sexual intercourse between unmarried persons in Islamic jurisprudence. The issue of rape is often complex but revolve primarily around the female victim’s honor – or presumed loss of it. A female victim is not only violated physically, but also socially, as her bodily integrity and character are compromised. It is not uncommon for community members to place blame on the victim herself.

As a result, great stigma is associated with rape. Human Rights Watch (2018) reported that many women in Mauritania prefer to avoid the negative attention, spectacle, and their potential prosecution via zina by seeking to press charges. Mothers, fathers, and husbands have been known to kick daughters and wives out of their homes over the alleged “shame” brought to the family, further reducing the victim’s chances of securing much-needed support during the long process of recovery. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that there is often a social disparity among the involved parties. The perpetrator often comes from a higher social class or more well-connected family than the victim. Because the Mauritanian judiciary lacks independence, given these social realities, a ruling in favor of the victim would be a difficult battle that many would not have the resources – time, financial, or social – to pursue. This dynamic reifies societal perceptions that “shame” can be assigned to those who already occupy the lower rungs of society, but never to someone of equal or higher social standing. Shame is weaponized to prevent the marginalized from seeking recourse, which in turn reinforces the racial and status hierarchy.

Conclusion

The survival of women in Mauritania, particularly the Haratin, is a testament to resilience against a backdrop of systemic exclusion and environmental hostility. Slavery has not vanished; rather, it has been transformed by the confluence of climate change and the transition from nomadic to sedentary life. While many have achieved a degree of physical liberation through the chaos of drought-driven migration, they remain arrested by “mental shackles” and a judicial system that weaponizes honor to ensure their continued subordination.

However, the narrative of the Mauritanian woman is not one of mere passivity. Through the cultivation of entrepreneurial skills and the establishment of informal economic exchange networks, Haratin women are actively eroding the foundations of the stratification system. By prioritizing the education of their progeny and reclaiming the value of their own labor, they are striking against the state-sanctioned barriers to their agency. These efforts signify a slow but defiant shift toward upward mobility, proving that even within a rigidly stratified society, the foundation for a new social order is being laid by those at its most marginalized edge.

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