Statement of SOS Esclaves 11th session of the Forum on Minority Issues “Statelessness” 29 and 30 November 2018 Item 3: Statelessness resulting from conflicts, forced population movements, and migration affecting minorities: main challenges and possible solutions” The right to exist is a long and perilous path for minorities in Mauritania, where the Harratines, Wolof, Soninke, and Pular minorities are greatly affected by statelessness, despite having always lived on the territory. All minorities are victims of discrimination in relation to the establishment and renewal of civil status, under a prism of discrimination from multiple facets: limited access to land, education (as their languages are ignored), water, and to health and public services, etc… The right to citizenship in Mauritania is currently framed by a new, so-called “modern” law. However, the process of registering civil status, called “enrolment”, is discriminatory. They are many constraints and obstacles for when a member of a minority wishes to register: the requirement of proof of nationality (when they know that Black people lost their documents during the events of 1989), birth certificates of parents, marriage certificates, etc… For the survivors of slavery, it is even more difficult because the births of slaves are not declared by their masters. They do not have any identity or legal recognition, because they are considered as objects. The lack of registration results in the impossibility of obtaining education, the right to vote, and social services, and reduces the internal mobility, which is marked by questioning, arrests, and multiple humiliation. Guaranteeing the right to citizenship can only be effective if the registration and census procedures are accessible and applicable for all people in a territory, regardless of socio-economic status, ethnicity, language, gender, or place of residence. 1. Recommendation to the State to institute specific measures for the access of survivors of slavery to civil status, since it is pointless to ask them for certificates that they never had. 2. The UN must recommend to the state to reinstate the civil status of former deportees returning to the country.