On 27 August 2024, a delegation from the Max Planck Foundation met with the President of the Constitutional Council of Mauritania, Justice Diallo Mamadou Bathia, as well as the Secretary-General and two Justices at the seat of the Constitutional Council in Nouakchott, Mauritania to discuss and outline the cooperation in the framework of the Foundation’s two-year project ‘Strengthening the Reach and Accessibility of Constitutional Justice in Mauritania’, which is generously funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
Meetings also took place with the Head of the Department of Civil Society Engagement and the Head of the Human Rights Department of the Mauritanian Commissariat of Human Rights, Humanitarian Action, and Promotion of Civil Society. The Foundation also met with Dr Mohamed Dah Abdelkader, Director of the Mauritanian Centre of Legal, Economic, and Social Studies (‘CMERJES’) to discuss and agree on the scope of upcoming collaborative events. CMERJES warmly welcomed the legal scientific cooperation with the Foundation and stressed the need to address the challenges facing constitutional reforms in Mauritania with comparative legal analyses to provide options for decision-makers to find the best approach that will accommodate the national context in Mauritania.
In addition to that, the Foundation team was also hosted at the National Assembly of Mauritania by the Honorable Speaker, Mohamed Ould Meguett, the Secretary-General and the Honorable Members of Parliament. The leaders of the Assembly commended the goals of the Foundation’s new project with the Constitutional Council and expressed their strong interest in potential future collaborations.
A meeting with Fatma Elkory Oumrane, Coordinator of Mauritania’s Equality Observatory affiliated with Nouakchott University, concluded the mission. The meeting served to set the grounds for the Foundation’s engagement with impactful local NGOs working on women’s access to justice as part of the project.