The Board of Directors of the World Bank (WB) ap proved a loan of US$ 25.5 million for Mauritania for the additional financing of the programme of urban development (PDU), a source close to the bank announced. These funds will serve to support the efforts of the Mauritanian government to improve the access to basic infrastructures in urban areas, particularly for the disadvantaged zones.

Sahrawi refugee Fetim Salam Hamdi has been portrayed as a slave in a poorly translated documentary film. But Ms Hamdi insists she is a free woman and now goes to court to stop the film's screening. The Australian documentary film "Stolen", shot in the Algeria-based refugee camps housing over 100,000 Sahrawi refugees last year, portrays the Ms Hamdi as a slave.

Protesting dock workers in Mauritania Thursday clashed with the riot police in Nouakchott, the nation's capital, leaving many workers injured. The Police used teargas and batons to disperse the workers, who in turn retaliated by throwing sticks and stones.

The mining and port city of Nouadhibou, 465 kilometres from Nouakchott, on Saturday afternoon was to host rallies planned by both the ruling party and the opposition. The Coordination of Democratic Opposition (COD), an umbrella of a dozen political parties, announced it would hold a big rally on Saturday in Nouadhibou, the economic capital of Mauritania.

Hanevy Ould Dehah, the editor of the website Taqadoumy, was finally freed along with around 100 ordinary offenders under a presidential pardon issued in honour of Mawlid (the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday). “We welcome Dehah’s release after eight months of unjustified detention,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The president seems to have heard the appeals from Mauritanian journalists and the international community. We thank them for interceding.”

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the harsh, two-year jail sentence which a court passed yesterday on Hanevy Ould Dehah, the editor of the website Taqadoumy, at the end of an incomprehensible and arbitrary trial.

A recent fatwa banning female genital mutilation/cutting in Mauritania will help reduce the practice only if religious leaders take the message to the people, scholars and anti-FGM/C activists say.

Human rights campaigners who have been struggling for years to eliminate female genital mutilation (FGM) in West Africa got a boost this week as news emerged that a group of Muslim clerics and scholars in Mauritania had declared a fatwa, or religious decree, against the practice.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the unlawful, arbitrary and unjustified detention of Hannevy Ould Dehah, Director of Taqadoumy website in Dar Nahim prison in Nouakchott, after he had served his term.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the unlawful, arbitrary and unjustified detention of Hannevy Ould Dehah, Director of Taqadoumy website in Dar Nahim prison in Nouakchott, after he had served his term.

Mauritanian authorities detained three top businessmen charged with embezzling millions of euros of public funds late on Wednesday in a case that has sparked new political tensions in the desert state.

People living with HIV in Mauritania are voicing their concerns about the suspension of HIV/AIDS funding by the World Bank and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. They feel powerless in the face of the decisions, of which they are suffering the consequences.

Despite strong efforts by the toppled democratic government of Mauritania, slavery has yet to be rooted out in the country, a UN report documents. Under the new government, little progress is made to fight slavery.

Farmers in Mauritania will receive financial help to turn milk into butter and cheese, to clean and package the vegetables they grow and to add value to other raw products under a $12 million programme unveiled by the United Nations agency tasked with eradicating rural poverty. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) announced that it will provide a grant of $6 million and a loan of $6 million as part of the scheme, which aims to boost food production and to lower the West African country’s dependence on food imports.

Hundreds of serious cases of violence against women were recorded in Mauritania between 2007 and 2009, the Chairperson of the Association to fight Against Dependence (ALCD-RIHAB), Mrs. Fatimetou Mint Ahmed Jiddou, has disclosed.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called for the release of Hanevy Ould Dehah, editor of Taqadoumy website, who was charged with “offending public decency” and sentenced to six months imprisonment by the court in Nouakchott. “This is an unduly severe and political judgment, especially as only one of the charges was finally retained,” declared Gabriel Baglo, Director of IFJ Africa Office. “Our colleague must be released,” he added.

Campaigners against HIV/AIDS in Mauritania face an uphill task to put their messages across, especially those that deal with safer sex and condom use. Campaigners have to cut corners in order to avoid angering the country's powerful religious clerics. "With a predominantly Muslim population that seeks guidance from the Quran, any advocacy outside the main parameters of religion is more often than not frowned upon, derided and scorned," says John Sadeed head OF NADOA, an advocacy NGO in Mauritania that promotes attitudinal changes and positive living for those people with HIV.

Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who was elected in the first ballot of Mauritania's 18 July presidential election on with 52.47% of the votes, on Wednesday took the oath before the Constitutional Court at the Olympic Complex Office in Nouakchott. Senegalese and Malian presidents, Abdoulaye Wade and Amadou Toumani Toure respectively, representatives from several countries and international organisations, the country's acting president, Ba Mamadou, officials from the government, the Senate and the Islamic High Council (HCI), attended the ceremony.

In December 2008, a group of young women staged a protest against the common practice of fattening women before marriage, intended to make them more attractive in the eyes of men. The protest did not immediately result in the end of the practice, but it was a landmark event showing a new assertiveness among Mauritanian women in a society where men use tradition and sharia law to maintain their dominance.

The president of Mauritania's Independent National Electoral Committee (INEC), Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Dey, has resigned his position. Dey is a member of the opposition Rally of Democratic Forces (RFD). No reason has been given for the resignation which comes 5 days after the holding of the presidential poll won in the first round by Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of the Union for the Republic (UPR), Several opposition figures have criticised the result saying there was "fraud a nd manipulation" of the voters' register.