Under renewed pressure from the EU to prevent migrants from reaching the Canary Islands, in recent months Mauritanian authorities have arbitrarily arrested, detained, and expelled thousands of migrants. The West African state has come under repeated scrutiny in recent years for its detention and deportation practices, but the scale of the recent crackdown has attracted heightened concern and prompted condemnation from neighbouring countries including Mali.
Deportation Campaign
In a recent article, El Pais reports that 30,000 irregular migrants were apprehended between January and April this year in sweeping raids. According to the newspaper, migrants were rounded up from their homes, workplaces, and streets, as well as following interception at sea, before being detained in various temporary detention facilities and forcibly expelled across the border into Mali and Senegal. Numerous reports allege that migrants have faced abuse and mistreatment during these operations: according to Al Jazeera for example, migrants were “stripped of all their belongings, including their mobile phones” and “tortured” while in detention. The nationalities of those affected by this campaign are reportedly largely Malian, Senegalese, Ivorian, Guinean, and Gambian.
One Guinean migrant, widely cited by a variety of media outlets, described being arrested and beaten by police in the middle of the night, being held for three days in a police detention facility with no food or access to toilets, and being abandoned at the border with Senegal (Rosso). Here, he described himself and others wandering the streets “with nowhere to go.” Rosso has been the focus of several reports, as there are reportedly “hundreds” of migrants stranded and “in distress” on both sides of the border here. Although Mauritanian authorities have so far failed to disclose any information regarding the numbers affected by the deportation campaign, in late April InfoMigrants cited an aid worker stating that buses carrying 60 or 70 migrants were regularly arriving in the town.
Rights observers, including the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, describe these arrests and deportations as “arbitrary” and state that they have been “carried out with brutality and disregard for fundamental rights, constitute a serious violation of human dignity and of the international and regional commitments made by our country.”
Several governments in the region have also condemned the latest operation. In March, Mali’s government released a statement expressing “indignation” regarding the treatment of its nationals and stated that “the conditions of arrest are in flagrant violation of human rights and the rights of migrants in particular.” That same month, Gambia’s Foreign Minister visited Mauritania and discussed the treatment of Gambian citizens with Mauritanian authorities.
Detained in “Hangars and Warehouses”
According to El Pais, migrants have been temporarily detained in a variety of “security force hangars and warehouses.” In a recent parliamentary session, Interior Minister Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed Lemine claimed that these facilities are “equipped with services such as food, water, electricity, and sanitary facilities” where their rights are respected, and that their expulsions are being carried out “in accordance with international conventions, national sovereignty, and international human rights obligations.”
These claims, however, are highly questionable. While the GDP lacks comprehensive information on all current detention facilities in the country due to a lack of transparency surrounding detention practices, Mauritania has a history of detaining non-nationals in poor conditions – numerous recent reports have documented severely inadequate conditions in several known facilities.
In 2024 for example, a consortium of media outlets investigating detention and deportation in Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia, highlighted dire conditions in the Ksar Detention Centre in Nouakchott. Images and videos they received reportedly showed dark rooms with no furniture except beds (which often had no mattresses) and detainees forced to urinate in bottles. Testimonies also revealed that detainees–amongst them children–were deprived of adequate food and water, medical care, and lawyers. One detainee who spoke with the reporters said: “The police behaved very badly with us. They had no mercy.” More recently, Alarm Phone described the current “temporary holding facilities”–most of which appear to be buildings repurposed for detention–as “overcrowded and the living conditions are deplorable.”
The exact numbers of migrants currently in detention are also unclear. However in its second periodic report to the UN Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (submitted in May 2023), the country reported that 343 foreign nationals were in detention, 11 of whom were women. It noted that they were being held in 19 facilities, including: 17 “prisons” (in Néma, Aioun, Kiffa, Kaédi, Aleg, Rosso, Atar, Nouadhibou, Tidjikja, Nbeika, Sélibabi, Zouerate, Birmougrein, Akjoujt, Dar Naim, Centrale, and a Women’s prison); a juvenile detention facility, described as “closed centre for children in conflict with the law”; and so-called “isolation” centres. Given the scale of the recent operation, it is possible that significantly more people may currently be affected by arbitrary detention in the country.
A History of Abuse, Detention, and EU Involvement
This is not the first time that Mauritania’s treatment of migrants and asylum seekers has received international attention. In particular, the country’s use of immigration detention has repeatedly drawn criticism from human rights monitors as hardening migration controls in Morocco and elsewhere have resulted in Mauritania becoming a key transit country for African migrants seeking passage to Spain’s Canary Islands.
In 2024, Mauritania’s role in EU-sponsored migration control efforts in Africa drew widespread attention when a consortium of European newspapers and media outlets published a series of articles documenting how migrants across West and North Africa were often being abandoned in desert regions, a practice they termed “desert dumps.” In one of the articles, Lighthouse Reports related the story of a Guinea woman who had been intercepted at sea while trying to get to the Canaries: “Idiatou … told how she was intercepted at sea while trying to reach the Canary Islands from Mauritania. She was taken to a detention centre in the capital Nouakchott, where Spanish police officers took her photograph before she was forced in a white bus towards the border with Mali. There, in the middle of nowhere, she and 29 other people were sent away. ‘The Mauritanians chased us like animals,’ she recalls. ‘I was afraid that someone would rape me.’ After four days of walking she managed to reach a village and found a driver who took her to a relative in Senegal.”
The route from West Africa to the Canary Islands is widely viewed to be one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world. According to the NGO Caminando Fronteras, 6,829 people died while attempting the journey from Mauritania to the Canary Islands in 2024. This represents 70 percent of all deaths that the NGO recorded on the Atlantic route that year (a total of 9,757).
Spain’s involvement in migration enforcement in Mauritania dates back to at least the mid-2000s. In 2006 Mauritanian authorities, in collaboration with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, opened the country’s first detention centre. The facility, known locally as “El Guantanamito” (“Little Guantanamo”), was established inside a former school in the port city of Nouadhibou. Spain’s assistance in establishing the detention centre led to many questions over who ultimately controlled the facility and guaranteed detainees’ rights: while the Mauritanian National Security Service appeared to manage the site, Mauritanian officials stated that this was at the express request of the Spanish government. That same year, Spain–with EU support–deployed military and technological resources along the Mauritanian coast to prevent disembarkations. Four years later, in 2010, the country published a national migration strategy. This was developed in cooperation with EU technical experts and was primarily designed to enhance border control and security.
More recently, however, the numbers attempting the journey from Mauritania have increased significantly, and the country has become the principal departure point on the “Atlantic Route”. According to Alarmphone, 54 percent of the 658 vessels that arrived in the Canary Islands in 2024 originated from Mauritania. Spain’s National Security Department also reports that 25,081 migrants landed on Spanish soil from Mauritania in 2024–compared to 13,217 from Morocco and 12,038 from Algeria. With these growing numbers, Mauritania has come under renewed pressure from the EU, as well as Spain, to block migrants. In February 2024 the head of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Mauritania to discuss a “common roadmap” on migration management and pledged 210 million EUR for “managing migration, for humanitarian aid for refugees and for investments in employment, skills and entrepreneurship.”
Spain, too, has doubled down in its efforts to externalise migration controls to Mauritania. During a visit in August 2024, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced a new Memorandum of Understanding for “regular and circular” migration, reflecting Spain’s desire to deepen its partnership. Some Spanish security forces are also deployed in the country and observers confirm that they have been involved in migrant apprehensions.
Describing the arrest and detention of non-nationals, Alarmphone notes: “The operations are carried out by joint teams of the Mauritanian police and the Spanish Guardia Civil, and the individuals are then handed over to the National Security Department (emigration service).” Similarly, while monitoring the Ksar Detention Centre in Nouakchott in 2024, Lighthouse Reports “witnessed and filmed refugees and migrants being brought to the centre in a large truck and Spanish police officers entering the detention centre on a regular basis.”
European involvement in the country’s migrant practices have attracted criticism. The Mauritanian Association for Human Rights writes: “These agreements indirectly encourage repressive and inhumane practices on our territory, by transforming Mauritania into a bulwark against migratory flows. By outsourcing the management of migration, these states bear part of the responsibility for human rights violations committed in Mauritania.”
Growing Scrutiny from Human Rights Monitors
Both Mauritania’s and Europe’s role in the abusive treatment of refugees and migrants in the country have also drawn the critical scrutiny of a range of key international human rights monitoring bodies.
In 2008, the UN Committee against Torture issued an important finding in an individual case known as the Marine I Case (Committee against Torture, J.H.A. v Spain, 21 November 2008, no. 323/2007), which concerned Spain’s responsibility for 23 Indian nationals detained in an ad hoc detention facility in Nouadhibou. Although the case was deemed inadmissible–because the complainant, a Spanish citizen working for a human rights NGO, did not have standing–the committee acknowledged that Spain “maintained control over the persons on board the Marine I from the time the vessel was rescued and throughout the identification and repatriation process that took place in Nouadhibou. In particular, the State party exercised, by virtue of a diplomatic agreement concluded with Mauritania, constant de facto control over the alleged victims during their detention in Nouadhibou” (para 8.2).
More recently, in 2023, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances urged Mauritania to ensure “systematic and strict respect for the principle of non-refoulement.” In 2021, several recommendations were issued following the country’s third Universal Periodic Review, including:
- “Adhere to existing international frameworks to protect migrants and refugees, including those attempting to travel to the Canary Islands who land in Mauritania (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)”
- “Scale up efforts to combat human trafficking and protect the rights of victims as well as the rights of migrants and persons in vulnerable situations (Nigeria)”
