Haratin, the mask of modern slavery – portraits/03

Born in Slavery in Mauritania. Women who still lives in slavery, treated by everyone else as ‘property’: something only worth buying, selling, trading or destroying. They are deprived of freedom and find themselves hopeless. Haratins whose name literally means “those who have been freed” are descendants of the Black Moors, the historical slave population “owned” by the White Moors. According to the Global Slavery Index 2013 which provides a ranking of 162 countries around the world, Mauritania has the highest proportion of enslave people: 161.000 on 3.796.000. Slavery in Mauritania primarily takes the form of chattel slavery, meaning that adults and children are the full property of their masters who exercise total ownership over them and their descendants.