Mauritania’s Push to Reach 20% Quota for Women in 2006-07 Elections

March 2007: After over 20 years of authoritarian rule, Mauritania held presidential, parliamentary, and municipal elections in 2006 and 2007. Stating that excluding women from the economic and political process was “a waste” for a developing country (Middle East Media Research Institute), former President Ely Ould Mohamed Vall instituted a quota of 20% for female candidates in the parliamentary and municipal elections.

One month prior to the November 2006 elections, WLP Mauritania/Association des Femmes Chefs de Famille (AFCF) trained 40 women in leadership and political participation in preparation for the elections. The workshops’ goal was to encourage women to vote and to become political candidates.

In order to encourage Mauritanian women to take advantage of the 20% quota, AFCF held two workshops in the northern region of Mauritania, Nouadhibou, right across the border from the Western Sahara. In the last election in 2001, the political participation of women in the region had been almost 0%. In the 2006-07 elections, 32.6% of elected officials at the municipal level were women while about 20% at the parliamentary level were women.

The workshop opened with a discussion on why women should participate in politics. Participants agreed that the Mauritanian government has been promoting women’s advancement through the creation of a Secretary for Women’s Affairs in 1992, the Strategy for the Promotion of Women in 1995, the Personal Code Statute of 2004, and the 2005 quota system. They also emphasized that “Islam is favorable to women’s participation [in politics] because men and women are equal.”

In the workshop, the participants learned how to communicate in order to transmit a message, how to negotiate, how to give a speech, and how to mobilize resources for a campaign. They discussed the criteria for the perfect female candidate: She must be courageous so that she can champion issues specific to women. She must also have a strong spirit that is tolerant, intelligent, and competent.

On the last day of the workshops, the participants discussed the problems specific to the region such as slavery, the total absence of infrastructure, and the lack of adequate health services such as a pharmacy. The women discussed possible solutions to these problems, including building roads and founding a school of pharmacy.