Mauritanian Premier, Zeine Ould Zeidane, disclosed Saturday afternoon, a program aimed at fighting the after-effects of slavery, by working for the definitive elimination of economic and social discrepancies. Zeidane made the disclosure during a meeting held in Nouadhibou (465km north of Nouakchott), official sources told PANA. His statement, issued Sunday by the state press agency, was made on the occasion of the closing ceremony of a national awareness campaign on the Act, adopted in August 2007, which incriminates and criminalises slavery. The Premier noted that the Mauritanian government will set up a higher organisation in charge of overseeing the execution of the program to eliminate the after-effects of slavery “as part of an action which is not exclusively limited to a specific social stratum.”During the same closing meeting of the awareness campaign on the ban of pro-slavery practices, Mauritanian Minister of Justice, Limam Ould Tegueddy, stressed the judicial, economic and social dimension of the new Act. The adoption of the Act incriminating and criminalising slavery in Mauritania re sponded to an electoral pledge by President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. It is aimed at strengthening social cohesion in Mauritania, and includes associated measures at economic and social levels with a view to promoting former victims. The phenomenon of post-slavery practices, was at the center of a heated polemic between Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya’s power (overturned on 3 August 2005) and rights groups in the past 15 years.
