Women are pioneering Mauritania’s fledgling dairy industry and trying to get Mauritanians to support local small producers, but they face steep competition from the heavily subsidized European milk sector. The Mauritanian market is flooded with cheap milk products imported from Europe. Sixty per cent of the population depends on the livestock sector in some form for income, and the sector contributes almost eight per cent to the country's GDP, yet the country imports 65 per cent of its milk requirements, a joint report produced by the NGOs Intermon Oxfam , ACORD and AMAD noted.

Mauritanian journalist Obeid Ould Amegn, whose health is in bad condition, is still in the central prison of the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott. Obeid Ould Amegn, a journalist and an anti-slavery human rights activist, is the vice-president of the Club of Activist Journalists. He also runs the website Initi. Mauritanian police had arrested Obeid Ould Amegn on 29 April, in the capital Nouakchott, after he gave a statement to Al Arabiya TV network regarding those arrested following a book-burning protest.

The Forum of National Human Rights Organisations (FONADH), an umbrella organisation of about 15 non-governmental organisations, has strongly condemned the repression of a recent peaceful demonstration by workers of the Copper Mining Company of Mauritania (MCM) that led to the death of one worker and injuries to several others. In a statement issued in Nouakchott, FONADH demanded that the authorities should 'clarify the circumstances of the death of Mohamed Ould Mechdhoufi.' It demanded that those responsible for the death of the worker be brought to justice, saying 'FONADH considers them responsible for the consequences of this barbaric act and demands the immediate release of detained workers'.