With our correspondent in Nouakchott, Salem Mejbour

The Teyarett enrollment center, located north of Nouakchott, is too small to accommodate the hundreds of Mauritanians who came to be registered. Because without civil status documents, they are deprived of travel and employment, and their children cannot attend school.

"Many sick people who come to hospitals in Mauritania cannot benefit from free national healthcare because they do not have civil status documents. Many Mauritanian citizens cannot travel to earn a living and try their luck because they lack civil status documents," explains activist and politician Biram Dah Abeid.

Family registration

This is the case for Youba who comes from Adel Bagrou, a city in far eastern Mauritania near the border with Mali: "I have no civil status documents. I came here to enroll to obtain these documents. But when I arrived, I was told to return to Adel Bagrou. I came with my father, my mother, my wife, my four children, but there is still no solution. You come today, you're told to come back tomorrow. And so on."

Within the National Agency for Populations and Secured Documents, officials claim that registration is inclusive for any Mauritanian who presents themselves with their family. "A Mauritanian is a Mauritanian because he has parents, because he has cousins in Mauritania, because he has family in Mauritania. So that means he cannot say: I am Mauritanian, I have no links. I have neither father nor mother nor brother nor sister. That is not possible," says Boide Sghair Sidi Mohamed, the agency's secretary general.

According to the official, 145,000 adult Mauritanians were registered between 2019 and 2020.