Overview

• Human Rights Watch released a 142-page report detailing torture, rape, arbitrary detention, racist abuse, extortion, and collective expulsions by Mauritanian security forces from 2020 to early 2025.
• The investigation draws on 223 interviews and documents 77 specific violations against migrants and asylum seekers from West and Central Africa, with accounts spanning police, coastguard, navy, gendarmerie, and army operations.
• HRW links the abuses to European externalization policies, citing a €210 million EU–Mauritania deal and expanded Spanish support, and reports instances where Spanish forces were present during abusive arrests.
• Mauritania reports over 28,000 expulsions in the first half of 2025 and detainees described inhumane conditions in police-run centers, including lack of food, unsanitary overcrowding, and children held with unrelated adults.
• The Mauritanian government rejects allegations of systematic abuses and highlights May 2025 standard operating procedures and a stated ban on collective expulsions, while the European Commission defends the partnership as anchored in rights.