21 Facts About Mauritania

Mauritania is the eleventh largest country in Africa, and 90 percent of its territory is situated in the Sahara.

Mauritania was succeeded by Mohamed Ould Ghazouani following the 2019 elections, which were considered Mauritania's first peaceful transition of power since independence.

Mauritania is culturally and politically part of the Arab world: it is a member of the Arab League and Arabic is the sole official language.

Mauritania is known for its poor human rights record, most notably the continued practice of slavery, a result of a historical caste system between the Bidhan and Haratin.

Mauritania takes its name from the ancient Berber kingdom that flourished beginning in the third century BC and later became the Roman province of Mauretania, which flourished into the seventh century AD.

Related searches

Many Berber tribes in Mauritania fled the arrival of the Arabs to the Gao region in Mali.

From 1644 to 1674, the indigenous peoples of the area that is modern Mauritania made what became their final effort to repel the Yemeni Maqil Arabs who were invading their territory.

The President justified this on the grounds that Mauritania was not ready for western-style multi-party democracy.

Mauritania had brought the country to near-collapse through the disastrous war to annex the southern part of Western Sahara, framed as an attempt to create a "Greater Mauritania".

Mauritania's regime was plagued by attempted coups and intrigue within the military establishment.

Mauritania deepened these ties during the late 1990s and early 2000s, as part of Mauritania's drive to attract support from Western states and Western-aligned Arab states.

Mauritania has not rescinded its recognition of Polisario's Western Saharian exile government, and remains on good terms with Algeria.

Mauritania grew increasingly isolated internationally, and tensions with Western countries grew dramatically after it took a pro-Iraqi position during the 1991 Gulf War.

On 28 October 1999, Mauritania joined Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan as the only members of the Arab League to officially recognize Israel.

In November 2014, Mauritania was invited as a non-member guest nation to the G20 summit in Brisbane.

Mauritania is home to seven terrestrial ecoregions: Sahelian Acacia savanna, West Sudanian savanna, Saharan halophytics, Atlantic coastal desert, North Saharan steppe and woodlands, South Saharan steppe and woodlands, and West Saharan montane xeric woodlands.

Mauritania's wildlife has two main influences as the country lies in two Biogeographic realms, the north sits in the Palearctic which extends south from the Sahara to roughly 19° North and the south in the Afrotropic realms.

President of Mauritania is directly elected by absolute majority popular vote in 2 rounds if needed for a 5-year term.

Mauritania has been described as a "desperately poor desert nation, which straddles the Arab and African worlds and is Africa's newest, if small-scale, oil producer.

Amnesty International in 2008 alleged that torture was common in Mauritania, stating that its usage is "deeply anchored in the culture of the security forces", which use it "as a system of investigation and repression".

Juan E Mendez, an independent expert on human rights from the United Nations, reported in 2016 that legal protections against torture were present but not applied in Mauritania, pointing to an "almost total absence of investigations into allegations of torture".