Mauritania

Brief description

A lack of reliable official data on Zakat (obligatory payment made annually under Islamic law on certain kinds of property and used for charitable and religious purposes) and its characteristics, coupled with a lack of understanding of its potential for the achievement of the SDGs hinders Mauritania's Government's capacity to make optimal use of these funds to effectively meet the development challenges. The Joint Programme intends to support the government in removing the existing major constraints and financing gaps to fully explore the opportunities offered by Zakat. 

Approach

The programme activities will include an in-depth knowledge of Zakat, a mapping of all the actors and the creation of favorable conditions for an effective management system able to reduce the income gaps within and between communities, to mobilize then direct financial resources towards the most needy and towards productive activities. Zakat recipients, including those excluded from the conventional banking system, especially vulnerable women and youth, will be enabled to use the funds to finance their own business projects and possibly in turn contribute to Zakat.

The programme brief description

Mauritania has made significant progress in its support to poor and vulnerable populations in recent years. However, these interventions remain fragmented with critical gaps. The Joint Programme funded by the SDG Fund will address these issues by improving articulation between contributory and non-contributory social protection programmes and support to developing the critical missing pieces of a social protection system for Mauritania. Multiple actions of the Integrated Social Protection Joint Programme seek to enable groups and populations in vulnerable situations to organize, be heard and participate in national or regional development processes, and to provide accessible data and information to expose inequities of these categories of population.

Approach

The Joint Programme will develop a pilot approach of a coherent integrated regional model of existing social protection programmes and support social protection dialogue in Mauritania. The programme will adopt a gendered approach and undertake specific actions to promote gender transformation to ensure that the logic of “leave no one behind” is fully deployed. It will (i) deliberate target women for social transfers (when relevant) and identification of transfer modalities that are supportive of women’s choice and empowerment; (ii) provide specific interventions for girls, pregnant and breastfeeding girl / women / caregivers (education; malnutrition prevention and treatment; access to basic services); (iii) use safety-nets as platforms to convey key messages promoting gender equity and transformation, partly in relation to girls’ education, harmful practices (child marriage; FGM; GBVs) and on women’s socio-economic empowerment.

Target groups

Women, children, girls, youth, persons with disabilities, older persons, rural workers, Refugees and asylum seekers, migrants.