Land Governance and Right to Adequate Housing in Mauritania: Key challenges & recommendations

Mauritania finds itself at a pivotal juncture in the quest to secure housing rights for its population. Four decades after Ordinance No. 83-127 abolished customary ownership and vested all unregistered land in the State, landlessness, informal urban growth, and forced evictions remain acute.

The State's dual land-tenure framework—modern statutory law overlaid on largely unrecognised customary law—has failed to deliver tenure security to broad segments of society, especially communities discriminated on the basis of work and descent (CDWD), rural women, and pastoral groups. A careful appraisal of land policies, distribution patterns, and institutional practices therefore becomes indispensable for the Special Rapporteur's forthcoming report on adequate housing.
Despite its vast territory—over one million square kilometres—Mauritania is characterised by marked spatial disparities.

The Sahara encroaches in the north and centre, confining most economic activity to the narrow strip of the Senegal River Valley and the coastal cities of Nouakchott and Nouadhibou. Rapid rural-to-urban migration in the 1980s and 1990s transformed Nouakchott from a planned administrative capital into a sprawling conurbation where more than half of the country's population now resides. While national GDP grew on the back of mining and fisheries, formal job creation lagged behind, and demand for serviced land and housing far outstripped supply.

This structural imbalance has amplified the vulnerabilities generated by the 1983 land reform, leaving a legacy of informality, precarious settlements, and periodic state-led relocations. Any future reform must therefore reconcile the imperative of tenure security with the realities of climatic stress, urbanisation, and social exclusion.

Customary Rights and Tenure Insecurity

The 1983 ordinance effectively annulled traditional land ownership and rendered communal tenure invisible in law. Rural households that had long cultivated or grazed lands without formal titles became legal occupants at best, squatters at worst. Over time, landlessness translated into housing precarity: villagers evicted for large-scale irrigated schemes in the Senegal River Valley rebuilt rudimentary dwellings on the margins of provincial towns, while pastoralists found their transhumance corridors obstructed by privately titled estates. In peri-urban Nouakchott, sites-and-services schemes struggled to keep pace with demand, forcing new migrants to erect makeshift shelters in flood-prone areas. A revision of the ordinance is urgently required to recognise long-standing occupation as a basis for ownership or usufruct, and to establish accessible registration pathways that reflect customary realities.

Unequal Land Distribution

Approximately 80 per cent of unregistered land remains under state control, and where titles exist, they are concentrated in the hands of political and commercial elites, predominantly from Arab-Berber (Beydane) groups. By contrast, CDWD families—descendants of slaves or stigmatised artisan castes—are largely excluded from land markets. Women face additional hurdles: evidence from the FAO indicates that female ownership accounts for less than 10 per cent of agricultural land.

A national policy of inclusive land allocation, backed by quotas for women and marginalised groups, would address these disparities. Establishing a gender- and ethnicity-disaggregated land registry would enhance transparency and facilitate judicial redress against land grabbing.

Systemic Barriers for CDWD Communities

CDWD households typically lack the documentation—titles, building permits, even birth certificates—required to assert legal occupancy. They report limited access to land information, distrust of administrative procedures, and frequent evictions without compensation. Discrimination extends to social-housing lotteries, where informal identity checks often exclude them. A dedicated national unit offering free legal aid, accelerated regularisation of CDWD settlements, and anti-discrimination training for land officials are essential first steps toward rectifying this systemic bias.

Community and Collective Land Rights

Although Ordinance No. 83-127 theoretically allows collective registration, the process is prohibitively time-consuming and expensive. Communal resources—grazing grounds, oases, and shared fields—are thus vulnerable to encroachment by licence holders or speculative investors. Formal recognition of collective tenure through simplified, publicly subsidised procedures, and the integration of customary rights into local development plans, would safeguard these commons from dispossession.

Expropriation Procedures
Law No. 90-67 on expropriation for public purpose guarantees compensation, yet consultations are rare, valuations inadequate, and payments delayed. Violent evictions in Dar Naïm and Arafat contravened General Comment No. 7 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. A reformed framework must enshrine free, prior, and informed consent, create an independent appeals body, and prohibit evictions until fair resettlement is provided.

Positive Precedents
The Tarhil programme (2009–13) relocated 18,000 Nouakchott families to serviced plots, offering a model—albeit imperfect—of state-supported regularisation. In Guidimakha, a GIZ-backed pilot helped communities secure collective titles. The forthcoming National Social Housing Strategy, drafted with UN-Habitat, shows promise if aligned with international standards.

Scaling such initiatives, strengthening social services, and embedding anti-discrimination safeguards could transform them into durable solutions.

Strategic Recommendations

Legal Reform and Tenure Security: Amend Ordinance No. 83-127 to recognise customary occupation and enable progressive titling. Establish local mediation panels and subsidise land registration for rural residents.

Inclusive Land Policy: Introduce quotas for women and marginalised groups in state-land allocations. Develop a transparent, disaggregated land registry and empower courts to void illicit titles.

Protection of CDWD Settlements: Launch a nationwide regularisation drive for CDWD neighbourhoods, accompanied by public outreach and anti-bias training for officials. Provide free legal aid through a dedicated land-inclusion unit.

Collective Rights and Commons: Pass enabling legislation for collective tenure, streamline registration, and incorporate customary rights into spatial-planning tools.

Expropriation Safeguards: Reform Law No. 90-67 to ensure prior consent, timely market-based compensation, and prohibition of forced evictions without resettlement.

Scale-Up of Good Practices: Expand Tarhil-style relocation with robust infrastructure and social services. Integrate the Social Housing Strategy into a comprehensive, equity-driven national land policy.
By confronting historical injustices, closing legal gaps, and prioritising inclusive tenure security, Mauritania can transform its land governance architecture into a bulwark for the right to adequate housing, thereby honouring its obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

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