Minister of Justice: The Draft law on the Establishment of a Specialized Court to Combat Slavery, Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants aims to Achieve a set of Objectives and Principles

The Minister of Justice, Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Cheikh Abdallahi Ould Beye, said that the draft law on the establishment of a court of first instance specialized in combating slavery, trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants aims to achieve a set of objectives and principles, including improving the administration of justice and ensuring greater efficiency in dealing with cases of slavery, trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants.

He added that these steps will be carried out through the introduction of some reforms to the number, composition and functioning of specialized courts to combat slavery and slavery practices, established under the law issued in 2015, criminalizing slavery and punishing slavery practices, noting that after the application of this law for more than eight years, the need to fill some gaps, and overcome the difficulties and obstacles that limited its effectiveness.

The proposed reforms sought to establish a court of national jurisdiction in order to harmonize the national judicial treatment system to confront the phenomena mentioned, since so far the crimes of slavery and slavery practices remained within the jurisdiction of the three specialized courts, while the crimes of trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants were dealt with by other ordinary and non-specialized courts.

He added that this reform seeks to achieve professionalism in the judicial treatment of the crimes of slavery, trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants, strengthen the protection of human rights, in accordance with the Mauritanian Constitution and the commitments emanating from ratified international conventions in this field, and bring criminal justice closer to citizens and victims of this type of crime in particular.