Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of the evidence his Department holds or is otherwise aware of on the existence of slavery in Mauritania.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials regularly raise slavery with the Mauritanian government in the UK and in Mauritania, most recently in December. Officials also work closely with NGOs and other organisations to understand slavery and its scale in Mauritania. We made a recommendation in Mauritania’s Universal Periodic Review in November that the government begin the collection of data on the number of people held in slavery to facilitate the monitoring of eradication efforts under the 2007 anti-slavery law.