Mauritania

Background

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This map does not reflect a position by UNICEF on the legal status of any country or territory or the delimitation of any frontiers.

Because 43 per cent of Mauritania’s total population is younger than age 15, efforts on behalf of children are vital to improving the country’s overall development prospects. Significant progress is being made, despite serious challenges such as a cholera outbreak, flooding around the city of Rosso and a military coup.

Issues facing children in Mauritania

• Alarming numbers of children are severely malnourished. Poverty, natural disasters and a lack of basic nutritional knowledge have worsened the crisis.
• Only 53 per cent of households have access to safe drinking water.
• Diarrhoeal diseases, malaria and acute respiratory infections still claim the lives of many young children.
• Recent National Immunization Day campaigns have been hampered by a lack of sufficient funds and vehicles. The cold chain equipment used to preserve vaccines is poorly managed and maintained.
• Landmines and unexploded ordnance remaining from the Saharawi war pose a hazard to children in the northern part of the country.

Activities and results for children

• In 2005, nearly 100 per cent of children under age five received polio immunizations. Vitamin A supplements, which boost the immune system, were provided to 95 per cent of young children.
• In the disadvantaged regions where UNICEF has introduced multiple health interventions, 26 per cent of children sleep under long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, reducing their exposure to malaria. Antimalarial drugs are now available at all levels of the health-care system.
• In the province of Gorgol, UNICEF has supplied hospitals and clinics with medical equipment. Health-care workers have been trained to provide emergency obstetric and neonatal care.
• No cases of guinea worm were reported in 2005, raising hopes that the disease may finally be eradicated.
• A pilot centre offering services to prevent the mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS has been established in Sabkha, in the Nouakchott district.
• Thanks in part to advocacy from UNICEF, Mauritania has adopted a new Child Protection Act. Five thousand copies of the new law were distributed to local magistrates in Arabic and French.
• New alternatives to incarceration have been implemented for children in conflict with the law. A minors’ unit has been established in all police divisions.
• Three prominent religious leaders have issued a public call for an end to the practice of female genital mutilation.
• New latrines (with separate facilities for girls and boys) have been installed in 45 schools, benefiting more than 6,000 students.
• In 2005, approximately 100 hotel operators, police officers and tourism officials received training on how to prevent the sexual exploitation of children.
• UNICEF supports landmine awareness programmes among the nomadic populations in the northern part of Mauritania.