A new report has alleged migrants in the west African country of Mauritania were subjected to systematic abuse, including rape and torture, by security and border personnel in the country – and that EU migration policy exacerbated the problem.
The 142-page report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) documents alleged abuses by the Mauritanian police, coast guard, army and navy as they carried out border and migration control duties between 2020 and early this year.
Abuses included torture and sexual assault, extortion, theft, racist treatment, arbitrary arrest and inhumane detention conditions, the New York-based charity said.
“For years, Mauritanian authorities followed an abusive migration control playbook – sadly common across north Africa – by violating the rights of African migrants from other regions,” Lauren Seibert, refugee and migrant rights researcher at HRW, said.
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Marco Gibson, a Liberian man, was one of those interviewed for the report. He said Mauritania’s military arrested him with about 40 other migrants near the country’s northern border late last year.
He said they were beaten with sticks and a whip and that after detention he and others, including children, were expelled to the border area of Nioro de Sahel, which was attacked by an Islamist group days later.
In another case, a Mauritanian man said police tortured him when he was being interrogated in relation to migrant-smuggling in 2022.
Mauritania has become an increasingly common departure point for African migrants trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands by boat, now one of the most-frequented migrant routes to Europe.
A total of 46,800 people reached the islands last year, a record, although more than 10,000 died while making the perilous crossing during that period, the NGO Caminando Fronteras said.
In 2025 the numbers have dropped, with 11,575 people reaching the islands off Africa’s northwest coast during the first seven months of the year, about half the number compared to the same period last year, the Spanish interior ministry said.
HRW also blamed the European Union and specifically Spain for what it said was a policy of “continuing to outsource migration management to Mauritania”.
Last year, the west African country signed a new partnership with the EU in exchange for €210 million in funding in an effort to reduce illegal migration.
Spain increased its bilateral support to the country, maintaining a deployment of its own police to help Mauritanian officials with migration control.
Spain has been an outlier on migration within Europe, with its left-wing coalition government shunning the hard-line rhetoric being employed by many of its neighbours on the issue.
Last year, during a tour of west Africa, prime minister Pedro Sánchez described migrants as representing “wealth, development and prosperity” for Spain. An initiative to legalise the status of more than half a million undocumented migrants is in the Spanish parliament, awaiting debate.
The HRW report, however, asserted that Spain’s support of Mauritania had “incentivised” the abuse of migrants, for which it shared responsibility. It also alleged that Spanish police witnessed some of those incidents, such as abusive arrests and detentions.
In response to HRW’s claims, the Mauritanian government said it rejected “allegations of torture, racial discrimination or systematic violations of migrants’ rights”.
It also pointed to recent positive actions, including what it said was a ban on collective expulsions and new operating procedures to deal with migrants, introduced in May of this year.
HRW did acknowledge apparent improvements in Mauritania since the beginning of this year.
The European Commission said its partnership with Mauritania was “solidly anchored” in respect for rights” of migrants.
There was no immediate response from the Spanish government.
