Mauritania passes anti-slavery law

Mauritania has passed a law that promises prison for people who keep slaves – a monumental step in the African country’s push to route out the long-standing practice.

The law, adopted unanimously by Mauritania’s legislature, allows for sentences of up to 10 years for people found keeping slaves, along with fines and reparations to those who have been enslaved.

Slavery has existed for hundreds of years in Mauritania – a poor nation of Muslim nomads and traders on the edge of the Sahara Desert.

Yet it’s been hard to know how persistent the practice is because owners and slaves have often lived together as decades and call each other members of the same family.

The government officially abolished slavery in 1981, but no one has ever been prosecuted for the crime of slavery and no law previously set a punishment.