Mauritania

In Mauritania, new birth registration practices risk perpetuating intergenerational statelessness for the Haratin and Black Mauritanians. A national census, which began in 2013, only includes those who have been registered in the biometric civil register. Those who are not registered are not counted and do not officially exist in the eyes of the state. Some Mauritanian groups contend the civil registration process systematically discriminates against Hassaniya speakers who were formerly enslaved or their descendants, as well as the Afro-Mauritanian population. These populations have both been historically excluded from registration, and new practices risk perpetuating this exclusion. The exclusionary registration process, coupled with the biometric census, has been denounced before the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism as unduly depriving these people of their human right to identity and a nationality.