We Are Mauritanians
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Fatou Diop, 61, is one of thousands of Mauritanians who were stripped of their citizenship and forced into exile in Senegal in 1989. Diop and others were promised identification papers when they returned to Mauritania in April 2008 and set up camp in Lisse Rosso, made up of eight single-room blockhouses and a few dozen tents. Months of uncertainty followed their return. © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations -
Kadja Wonu, 5, stands in front of her home in Dagana, Senegal, with her mother, Aminita Anne, 32. They are among the thousands of Mauritanian exiles still living in Senegal who have signed up to make their way back to their homeland. © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations -
Astou Ba, 30, and her son Elhadji Camara, 3, returned to their Mauritanian village of Medina Salam. Medina Salam welcomed home about 45 exiled families in the wave of returns that ended in 1997. But the Mauritanian government returned only half of the land that the village cooperative was holding on that day in 1989 when the police surrounded the place, packed practically everyone into pick-up trucks, and dumped them at a ferry crossing to Senegal. Many additional families who returned in 2008 were forced to become dollar-a-day farm laborers. © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations -
Hamath Mbodj, 65, in front of his house in Dagana, a Senegalese village just across the river from Medina Salam, Mauritania. © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations -
Mahmout Diagne and his family were expelled in 1989 and informed by their government that they were no longer Mauritanian. They lived in exile across the border in Senegal for 19 years, until a return to Mauritania became possible. They now live in a temporary settlement in Lisse Rosso, Mauritania, waiting for the government to recognize them as citizens again. © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations -
Marianne Diallo, 20, a resident of Dagana, a village in Senegal, has lived her entire life with no recognized citizenship. In 2000, the African Commission ruled that the 1989 deportations had breached the African Charter, and the tens of thousands of Mauritanians forced into statelessness began the long process of reapplying for citizenship and returning home after nearly two decades. © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations -
Saidu Diallo, 19‚ has lived his entire life with no recognized citizenship, just across the river from his family’s home country of Mauritania. Thousands of Mauritanians have returned home since 2008 in a UN-monitored resettlement program, but Diallo and others have expressed reluctance to return, citing unfulfilled promises by the Mauritanian government and the hardship returning blacks have suffered in Lisse Rosso and other Mauritanian settlements. © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations -
Hamath Mbodj, 65, and Diallosalif Ousmane, 70, relax in the village of Dagana, Senegal. They are among Mauritanians who have yet to be repatriated to their country. © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations -
Children play on a tire swing in the village of Dagana, Senegal. Mansour Harouna, who was 24 when the Mauritanian government expelled him, has signed up to return to Mauritania. “It is not because I am suffering here,” Harouna said. “I earn a respectable living breeding cattle. In Mauritania, I will be living in a hut or a tent. But I am going back. It is a matter of principle,” he insisted. “My parents are still there. And I would be returning to their village. We have been living there for five centuries.” © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations -
For almost two decades, Oumou Diaw, 41, and her husband had lingered in forced exile in Senegal with no identification card, no passport, no right to vote, no legal standing to hold a job or travel freely. Now, by persevering in Lisse Rosso, they hope to regain legal recognition that they are citizens of their homeland. © Aubrey Wade/Panos Pictures for the Open Society Foundations
In 1989, Mauritania’s Arab-dominated government revoked the citizenship of an estimated 75,000 black Mauritanians. The police and army confiscated and destroyed their identification papers and deported most of them into neighboring Senegal and Mali. Many have been stranded in refugee camps ever since.
Many of those deported were black civil servants, prosperous merchants, and land owners, so the government found itself with a windfall of vacant jobs and unprotected assets to distribute to Arabic-speaking loyalists.
The government had reconsidered the expulsions by 1994. About half of the exiles had returned by 1997; however, many subsequently left again because they could not regain recognition of their nationality and get their lands back. In 2000, the African Commission ruled that Mauritania had breached the African Charter when it undertook the deportations.
This ruling and the installation of a new government in Mauritania in 2007 presented an opportunity to press for the return of the rest of the black deportees lingering in refugee camps. In January 2008, under United Nations auspices, a return began, and 4,760 people found their way back into Mauritania.
The challenges of the return are numerous. Many black Mauritanians returned only to find other people occupying and farming their land. Finding work is especially difficult since many black Mauritanians no longer have their official identification card.
The Open Society Justice Initiative continues to press for the return of the thousands of Mauritanians who remain in exile, still waiting to make their way back home.
