Early marriages in Mauritania
Discover the winning 2026 project "Early marriages in Mauritania: practices, socio-cultural logics, controversies and repression" from the Louis Dumont Fund, which supports research in social anthropology.
The project
"The aim of this project will be to study the actors involved, and to explore the evolution of structural and social dynamics around such practices, the controversies and the variety of strategies to fight them.
The purpose of my thesis will be to analyse how international aid, state and legal institutions in Mauritania, local and national Mauritanian women's rights associations and civil society organisations, NGOs, and various international institutions think about, operate and work on issues of gender-based violence (GBV), and more specifically on the issue of early marriage. One the aims of my research project is to examine the specific nature and complexity of the processes, perceptions, positions, projects and practices of all the public-sector associations that reflect on and act on the issue studied."
Binta Ba
Binta Ba is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3. Her doctoral thesis lies at the intersection of gender studies and the development anthropology. It examines current marriage practices in the Fulani society of Mauritania, focusing on “marriage at a very young age”, the perceptions it evokes, and the roleplayer dynamics it generates, both within local society and in public policy. This term refers to the marriage of children, and in particular of prepubescent girls or those under the age of 18.
