Claiming Equal Citizenship

WLP partner, Association des Femmes Chefs de Famille (AFCF), launched a campaign this month in Mauritania to advocate for equal rights to nationality for men and women.

Mauritania is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) with reservations on any part of the convention that is contrary to Islamic Sharia law or against the Mauritanian Constitution. AFCF asserts that equal citizenship rights are not against Sharia or the Constitution and should therefore be granted to Mauritanian women.

According to Mauritanian law, foreign men who marry Mauritanian women cannot become Mauritanian citizens. However, a foreign woman who marries a Mauritanian man gains Mauritanian citizenship upon marriage. No formalities are necessary. She does not even have to live in Mauritania or be able to speak the national language. Mauritanian women do not have the same rights as Mauritanian men to pass on their nationality to their husbands.

According to AFCF, this inequality violates article 9 of CEDAW, which states that women should have the same citizenship rights as men. As for children born of mixed unions, Mauritanian law automatically grants nationality to a child born of a Mauritanian father without thought to birthplace or the mother’s nationality. When it is a question of the child of a Mauritanian mother, the law distinguishes between two situations:

1. A child born in Mauritania to a Mauritanian mother and a foreign father is granted citizenship.
2. A child born outside of Mauritania to a Mauritanian mother and a foreign father is not granted citizenship.

AFCF will campaign to eliminate the inequalities in Mauritania’s nationality code, which discriminates unfairly between men and women and violates Mauritania’s obligation to CEDAW.