Related Research Articles
The Pearl incident was the largest recorded nonviolent escape attempt by enslaved people in United States history. On April 15, 1848, seventy-seven slaves attempted to escape Washington D.C. by sailing away on a schooner called The Pearl. Their plan was to sail south on the Potomac River, then north up the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River to the free state of New Jersey, a distance of nearly 225 miles (362 km). The attempt was organized by both abolitionist whites and free blacks, who expanded the plan to include many more enslaved people. Paul Jennings, a former slave who had served President James Madison, helped plan the escape.
Slavery has been called "deeply rooted" in the structure of the northwest African country of Mauritania and estimated to be "closely tied" to the ethnic composition of the country, although it has also been estimated that "Widespread slavery was traditional among ethnic groups of the largely nonpastoralist south, where it had no racial origins or overtones; masters and slaves alike were black", despite the cessation of slavery across other African countries and an official ban on the practice since 1905.
The continent of Africa is one of the regions most rife with contemporary slavery. Slavery in Africa has a long history, within Africa since before historical records, but intensifying with the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trade and again with the trans-Atlantic slave trade; the demand for slaves created an entire series of kingdoms which existed in a state of perpetual warfare in order to generate the prisoners of war necessary for the lucrative export of slaves. These patterns persisted into the colonial period during the late 19th and early 20th century. Although the colonial authorities attempted to suppress slavery from about 1900, this had very limited success, and after decolonization, slavery continues in many parts of Africa despite being technically illegal.
Mauritania, formally the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a sovereign country in Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to the north and northwest, Algeria to the northeast, Mali to the east and southeast, and Senegal to the southwest. By land area Mauritania is the 11th-largest country in Africa and 28th-largest in the world; 90% of its territory is in the Sahara. Most of its population of some 4.3 million lives in the temperate south of the country, with roughly a third concentrated in the capital and largest city, Nouakchott, on the Atlantic coast.
Front Line Defenders, or The International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, is an Irish-based human rights organisation founded in Dublin, Ireland in 2001 to protect those who work non-violently to uphold the human rights of others as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Human rights in Mauritania are generally seen as poor according to international observers, including Freedom House, the United States Department of State, and Amnesty International.
The April 6 Youth Movement is an Egyptian activist group established in Spring 2008 to support the workers in El-Mahalla El-Kubra, an industrial town, who were planning to strike on 6 April.
In 2009 Human trafficking in Mauritania was considered to be a controversial human rights issue. Mauritania was a suspected source and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically conditions of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Supposedly, some women, men, and children from traditional slave castes were subjected to slavery-related practices, rooted in ancestral master-slave relationships, which continue to exist in a limited fashion in both rural and urban settings. These individuals, held for generations by slave-holding families, may have been forced to work without pay as cattle herders and household help. Mauritanian and West African boys - referred to as talibes - were recruited to study at Koranic schools, but were sometimes subsequently subjected to forced begging within the country by religious teachers known as marabouts. Girls have been trafficked internally and from neighboring West African countries such as Mali, Senegal, and Gambia for involuntary domestic servitude. Mauritanian girls have been married off to wealthy men from the Middle East and taken there in some cases for forced prostitution. Mauritanian women were forced into prostitution within the country, as well as in the Arab States of the Persian Gulf.
Charles Turner Torrey was a leading American abolitionist. Although largely lost to historians until recently, Torrey pushed the abolitionist movement to more political and aggressive strategies, including setting up one of the first highly organized lines for the Underground Railroad and personally freeing approximately 400 slaves. Torrey also worked closely with free blacks, thus becoming one of the first to consider them partners. John Brown cited Torrey as one of the three abolitionists he looked to as models for his own efforts.
Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid is a Mauritanian politician and advocate for the abolition of slavery. He was listed as one of "10 People Who Changed the World You Might Not Have Heard Of" by PeaceLinkLive in 2014, and by Time magazine as one of the "100 Most Influential People". He has also been called the "Mauritanian Nelson Mandela" by online news organisation Middle East Eye.
Leyla Islam qizi Yunusova, better known as Leyla Yunus, is an Azerbaijani human rights activist who serves as the director of Institute of Peace and Democracy, a human rights organisation. She is particularly known for her work helping citizens affected by forced evictions in Baku, on whose behalf she organized several small protests.
The Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy is an annual human rights summit sponsored by a coalition of 20 non-governmental organizations. Each year, on the eve of the United Nations Human Rights Council's main annual session, activists from around the world meet to raise international awareness of human rights situations.
The Blackburn riots occurred during the summer of 1833 in Detroit, Michigan. They were the first race riots in the history of the city. The riots were spurred by the imprisonment of Thornton and Rutha Blackburn, an African-American couple that had escaped slavery in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1831. They were caught by slave catchers, thrown in jail, and sentenced to be returned to their owners in Kentucky. This ruling angered the African-American population of Detroit. Rutha Blackburn was smuggled out by two African-American women, and the following day, a mob formed outside the jail, demanding the release of Thornton. Refusal was met with violence as the mob stormed the jail, beating the authorities and taking Thornton. Thornton was transported to Canada, where he was reunited with Rutha.
Aminetou Mint El-Moctar is a Mauritanian politician and women's rights activist. She was shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 and is the first Mauritanian woman to be considered for the award.
Parliamentary elections were held in Mauritania on 13 and 27 May 2023, alongside regional and local elections.
Presidential elections were held in Mauritania on 29 June 2024. Incumbent Mohamed Ould Ghazouani won re-election for his second and final term as President, increasing his vote share by four points.
The Democratic Alternation Pole is a Mauritanian political coalition between Sawab and the legally unrecognized Refoundation for a Global Action parties founded on 31 May 2018 ahead of the 2018 parliamentary and 2019 presidential elections.
The Refoundation for a Global Action, formerly known as the Radical Party for a Global Action and commonly referred to by its French acronym RAG, is a political party in Mauritania.
Nida El Watan is a Bidhani supremacist political party in Mauritania.
Abdallahi Matallah Saleck, also spelled as Abdellahi Matalla Saleck, is a Mauritanian human rights activist and anti-slavery campaigner who rose to prominence as a member of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement. He served 743 days in prison between 2016 and 2018 due to his activism after being arrested at a protest in Nouakchott.
References
- ↑ "Global Slavery Index country data – Mauritania". Global Slavery Index. Archived from the original on 23 October 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
- ↑ Millions 'forced into slavery' BBC News, 27 May 2002
- ↑ The Abolition season on BBC World Service
- 1 2 3 4 OKEOWO, ALEXIS (8 September 2014). "Freedom Fighter". The New Yorker. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
- 1 2 "A Freed Slave's Son Fights Against Slavery" (PDF). UNPO. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
- ↑ "2015 Human Rights Tulip to be awarded to IRA-Mauritania". Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 8 December 2015.
- ↑ "Abdellahi Matalla Saleck transferred to Zouérat detention center". Front Line Defenders . 30 November 2016. Archived from the original on 27 January 2023. Retrieved 25 August 2024.
- ↑ "Good News: Anti-slavery activists free". Amnesty International Ireland . 23 July 2018. Archived from the original on 3 October 2022. Retrieved 25 August 2024.