Trade Benefits for a Slavery Stronghold

The big story out of this November’s AGOA summit was the termination of benefits for Gabon, Niger, the Central African Republic, and Uganda. And for good reason—those four governments have recently experienced significant democratic backsliding. The other, less publicized move the Joe Biden administration announced at the summit was the return of AGOA eligibility to Mauritania, following its 2019 termination. In a press release, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai commended progress the country has made on the issues of worker rights and forced labor and made reference to the hard work left to do “in effectively and decisively protecting internationally recognized worker rights, particularly eradicating the scourge of hereditary slavery.” Based on her statement, and the “rigorous eligibility requirements” AGOA countries are generally expected to meet, one could be led to believe that the labor rights situation in Mauritania is now acceptable. 

The northwest African country’s population is essentially split into ethnically determined castes, with members of the upper (Bidhan) caste born free and many members of the lower (Haratine) caste born enslaved. The Haratine make up most, but not all, of the enslaved people in Mauritania—other Black African ethnic groups also face severe discrimination. The country’s system of hereditary slavery based upon race and parentage has more in common with pre-1863 American chattel slavery than any form of so-called ‘contemporary’ slavery, and most in the West believe it to be a relic of the distant past. In Mauritania, it is alive and well. Mauritania has the third highest rate of slavery prevalence in the world according to the 2023 Global Slavery Index. That amounts to approximately 149 thousand people forced to work without compensation or dignity—thousands of them children, according to the Biden administration Department of Labor’s 2022 findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.  

The United States is, as USTR Tai’s statement indicated, returning AGOA beneficiary status to Mauritania on the basis of progress, not perfection. Since Mauritania first lost its AGOA eligibility in 2019, the country has improved conditions for NGOs such as the Initiative for Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement in Mauritania—which was permitted to register as an NGO with the government in 2021—and decreased legal barriers for slavery victims. There have also been indications that slavery denialism is falling out of favor among top officials. However, a March USTR delegation report released only eight months before the AGOA summit did not extol Mauritania’s progress. The delegation left the country still with serious questions about the justice system’s capacity to investigate and prosecute slavery cases, and the report signaled that the United States planned to continue supporting anti-slavery work in Mauritania, as key challenges remained.  

The UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery reported in summer 2022 that while he was encouraged by an increasing political will in the capital to acknowledge and legislate on the issue of slavery, enforcement is still lacking. Given that the practice of hereditary enslavement of Haratines dates back to the seventeenth century, a complete abdication of the system would require a marked shift in the mindset of citizens and national leaders alike. The special rapporteur specifically cautioned that child labor, sexual and other abuse of enslaved people, and violent reprisal against those who run from their enslavers persist. As for the improved conditions for abolitionist advocates, Amnesty International condemned Mauritania in October—only a month before the country’s re-admission to AGOA would be announced—for imprisoning a social media activist named Youba Siby without access to a lawyer or a trial. The Joe Biden administration has been made aware of the ongoing issue: just this August, one hundred advocacy groups pleaded with the White House to halt deportations of Mauritanian asylees and migrants due to ongoing human rights abuses in the country, including the systemic practice of slavery. Whatever nominal progress Mauritania’s government has made, we do not yet have strong evidence that it has eliminated slavery, nor that it has made sufficient progress toward that goal. Given the seriousness of hereditary slavery—which is a crime against humanity—Americans should expect evidence of effective progress to be available before Mauritania’s eligibility is restored. At the least, trade benefits should be withheld as long as Mauritanian abolitionists live under the threat of imprisonment, Haratine and Black children are forced to work in the homes and fields of the Bidhan, and anti-slavery courts remain paralyzed. 

It is, of course, possible that the administration made their decision based on an undisclosed set of factors—optimistically, the return of eligibility may be part of a closed-door diplomatic effort to improve U.S. credibility in volatile West Africa, or it could be a signal that the United States wants to work with Mauritania on security or other issues. While AGOA eligibility might confer positive externalities to the overall U.S.-Mauritania relationship, its central benefit is increased potential profits for those who control production and trade in Mauritania. The primary function of AGOA is to allow eligible countries to export goods to the United States without paying tariffs. It significantly reduces the costs of doing business for the Mauritanian government and businesses that sell their goods to America. Agriculture is by far the largest sector in Mauritania, and farms and ranches are exactly where much of the forced child labor is happening. It is hard to conceive of a monitoring mechanism that could entirely prevent Mauritanian landowners who enslave other people on the basis of ethnicity and caste status from profiting off of improved trade conditions. National economic growth and increased trade profits will not benefit the most disadvantaged members of an economy where they are not paid for their work; as long as slave labor is a feature of the Mauritanian economy, any economic benefits it reaps should be considered alongside ongoing harms to its laboring class. AGOA has made and is making a positive impact on the economic well-being of workers in market economies across Sub-Saharan Africa, many of them unequal and imperfect. Mauritania’s situation goes beyond that.  

The United States’ history with hereditary slavery—a system that President Biden and many others have rightly called our country’s “original sin”—gives America a unique obligation to reject its presence globally. Returning Mauritania's AGOA eligibility communicates to other potential trade partners that the United States will not consistently penalize forced labor, removes one of the few sources of international pressure on Mauritania’s government to enforce their anti-slavery laws, and is a step backwards in the fight to finally close the books on hereditary slavery.