The government of Mauritania is a semi-presidential Islamic republic built on the 1991 Constitution, with a directly elected president who holds most executive power, a unicameral National Assembly that makes the laws, and a judiciary that applies both French-style civil law and Islamic Sharia. Power is formally separated among the three branches, but the presidency dominates in practice, and Islam sits above ordinary legislation as the declared source of law.
The 1991 Constitution and What It Sets Up
The founding document is the Constitution adopted by national referendum in 1991. Its preamble declares Islamic law the “sole source of law” for the country, which sets the ceiling every statute and judicial decision must respect.1FAO. Mauritania’s Constitution of 1991 with Amendments through 2012 It describes Mauritania as an Islamic, indivisible, democratic, and social republic, vests sovereignty in the people through elected representatives and referendum, and guarantees equality before the law regardless of origin, race, sex, or social condition.
The text has been amended several times, most consequentially in 2006, 2012, and 2017. The 2017 referendum abolished the Senate, created elected regional councils, and added red bands to the national flag in memory of those who fought for independence from France.
Amendments can be proposed by the president or by members of parliament, but a parliamentary bill needs the signatures of at least a third of National Assembly deputies before debate and a two-thirds vote in the Assembly before it reaches a referendum, where a simple majority of votes cast is enough to adopt it. The president can skip the referendum by convening Parliament in congress, in which case three-fifths of the votes cast must approve. Three things are permanently off the table: the republican form of institutions, the pluralist character of Mauritanian democracy, and the rule that the presidency is a five-year term renewable only once.2Constitute. Mauritania 1991 (rev. 2012) Constitution The term-limit protection came under direct pressure in 2017, when government ministers publicly campaigned to let then-President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz run for a third term.
The President and the Government
Executive power is split between the president and a government led by a prime minister, which is the classic semi-presidential arrangement. The president is head of state, elected by direct universal suffrage for a five-year term and eligible for one re-election. A candidate must win an absolute majority of votes cast; if nobody does, the top two finishers go to a runoff.2Constitute. Mauritania 1991 (rev. 2012) Constitution
The constitutional toolkit is broad. The president is supreme commander of the armed forces, promulgates laws and oversees their execution, and can submit questions of national interest to the public through referendum. The president appoints the prime minister, and on the prime minister’s recommendation appoints the Council of Ministers. The president can also dissolve the National Assembly after consulting the prime minister and the president of the Assembly.
The Council of Ministers runs day-to-day policy and is collectively accountable to the National Assembly. That gives the prime minister a dual line of accountability, needing presidential confidence on one side and parliamentary tolerance on the other.
If the presidency becomes vacant, the president of the National Assembly now takes over on an interim basis. Before 2017, that duty fell to the president of the Senate; the abolition of the Senate forced the rewrite of the succession rule.
The National Assembly
Parliament is unicameral. The Senate, previously the upper chamber, was abolished in the August 2017 constitutional referendum after then-President Abdel Aziz called it “useless and too costly.” The National Assembly now has 176 deputies serving five-year terms, up from 157 under a January 2022 law.3Inter-Parliamentary Union. Mauritania National Assembly May 2023 Election
Deputies are chosen through a parallel voting system that splits the chamber in half. Eighty-eight seats are filled through a two-round majority vote in single- or two-seat constituencies. The other 88 are elected by proportional representation from multi-seat constituency lists. Within those totals, 20 seats are reserved for women elected from a single nationwide list and 11 for young candidates between the ages of 25 and 35 elected the same way.3Inter-Parliamentary Union. Mauritania National Assembly May 2023 Election
The Assembly debates and passes legislation, approves the government’s program and the national budget, and holds ministers to account through questions and motions of censure. Both the government and individual deputies can propose new laws, though finance bills have to start in the Assembly.1FAO. Mauritania’s Constitution of 1991 with Amendments through 2012
The Courts and the Dual Legal Tradition
Mauritanian law runs on two tracks that meet in the courtroom. Islamic Sharia governs personal status, family matters, and parts of criminal law. The French civil law tradition inherited from the colonial period shapes commercial, administrative, and procedural law. Which framework applies to a dispute is often the first question a litigant has to answer.
The ordinary court system is a three-tier hierarchy. Courts of First Instance hear civil and criminal matters at the trial level. Courts of Appeal review their decisions. The Supreme Court sits at the top, taking final appeals in civil, commercial, social, and penal cases, and its president serves a five-year term.
Two specialized bodies sit outside that hierarchy. The Constitutional Council rules on whether laws conform to the Constitution and supervises the regularity of national elections; its members serve nine-year terms and are appointed by the president of the republic, the president of the National Assembly, and (before its abolition) the president of the Senate. The High Court of Justice, made up of members elected by Parliament from among themselves, exists to try the president and government ministers for high treason or other serious offenses in office.
The Constitution guarantees judicial independence and sets up a Supreme Council of the Magistracy to oversee the judiciary, with one formation for bench magistrates and another for prosecutors. In practice, the president retains significant influence over judicial careers, including the power to appoint and dismiss Supreme Court judges. That gap between formal independence and presidential control is one of the more persistent structural issues in Mauritanian governance.
Parties, Elections, and Campaign Money
Mauritania has operated as a multi-party system since 1991, though a “presidential majority” bloc of the ruling party and its allies typically dominates. The law applies a survival rule: any party that fails to win at least 1 percent of votes cast in two consecutive general municipal elections is automatically dissolved by decree of the minister of the interior.4United States Department of State. 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – Mauritania The rule has steadily thinned the field over the years.
Presidential elections use the two-round majority system described above. Legislative elections use the parallel system, and the proportional half also carries over into regional and local races, giving smaller parties and opposition groups a route to representation that pure majority voting would close off.
The state funds qualifying parties out of the national budget. Forty percent of the total pool is divided equally among all parties or coalitions that cleared the 1 percent threshold in the most recent general municipal elections. The remaining 60 percent is distributed in proportion to each party’s share of the national vote. A separate ordinance caps maximum campaign spending, with the ceilings varying by the type of election and the size of the constituency.
Regions, Departments, and Communes
Below the national level, the country is divided into 15 regions, called wilayas, which include the capital district of Nouakchott (itself split into three sub-regions). The regions break down further into 63 departments, or moughataas.
Each region is run by a governor appointed by the central government to represent the executive and oversee state services. Departments are managed by appointed prefects, which keeps the structure firmly centralized. The 2017 amendments added a layer of elected regional councils meant to bring decision-making closer to local populations, though how much real authority those councils exercise is still developing.
Communes are the basic unit of local self-government. Each has its own legal identity and financial autonomy, with an elected municipal council and a mayor chosen through proportional representation. Property tax revenue is a primary source of commune funding, though collection has historically run through the national tax directorate rather than being handled locally.5International Monetary Fund. High-Level Summary Technical Assistance Report – Mauritania – Tax Policy Diagnostic
Rights Protections and the Anti-Slavery Framework
The most internationally scrutinized area of Mauritanian law is slavery and its legacy. The country criminalized slavery in 2007 and tightened the penalties with a 2015 law that classified slavery as a crime against humanity. Under that statute, slavery offenses carry 10 to 20 years in prison, while related practices like servitude and debt bondage carry 5 to 7 years, and denying someone access to education on the basis of slave status is punishable by 5 to 10 years. A 2020 trafficking law applies the same 10-to-20-year penalty to trafficking offenses that meet the 2015 definition of slavery.6United Nations. Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery – Visit to Mauritania
The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) is the official rights body, charged with monitoring compliance, educating citizens, and reporting problems to the authorities. It has also played an election-monitoring role, including signing a cooperation agreement with the European Union ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. A separate Mediator of the Republic acts as an ombudsman, handling disputes between private citizens and government agencies.