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Good practice

Mauritania's Reserved-Seat Quota for Women in Parliament and Local Councils

Mauritania · Nouakchott · See the Mauritania profile

Since 2006, Mauritania has required a 20% women's quota on party lists plus reserved National Assembly seats (2012 reform). Women's representation rose from near zero to 20-33% across elections, though a 2013 review found the reserved-seat law inconsistently enforced.

21 %
Women in National Assembly, first election under quota (2006)
25.2 %
Women in National Assembly (2014)
23.3 %
Women in National Assembly (2023)
Mauritania's Reserved-Seat Quota for Women in Parliament and Local Councils

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Ministry of the Interior and Decentralization / Secrétariat d'État chargé de la Condition Féminine
Period
2006-present
Keywords
political participation, electoral quotas, women in parliament, governance

Context

Mauritania introduced a 20% women's-candidate quota via Ordinance 2006-029, strengthened in 2012 by laws creating 20 reserved National Assembly seats for women and mandating list alternation, with a further adjustment in 2018.

Results

Women won roughly 21% of National Assembly seats and 30.3% of municipal seats in the first elections under the law (2006), rising to 22.1% (2010-2013), 25.2% (2014), 33% of combined Assembly/Senate seats in 2018, and 23.3% (41 of 176 seats) in the 2023 unicameral election.

Conclusions

The Trans-Saharan Elections Project reported that the 2012 reserved-seat provisions had 'not been enforced as of September 2013,' reflecting early resistance from political parties; mayoral representation remains far lower and is inconsistently reported across sources.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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