Mauritania's Failure to Adapt Gender-Based Violence..
While rape is often underreported globally, women in Mauritania have a very specific reason to underreport: fear of criminalizition. According to research published in 2018 by Human Rights Watch, many Mauritanian women who reported being raped were subsequently arrested for the Islamic crime of Zinā, or fornication. Women who do not provide sufficient evidence of rape are often not believed and can face imprisonment for a minimum of four years. While police demand a great amount of evidence from the victim, HRW points out that the state of Mauritania has limited forensic capacity to investigate rape. The circu..
