Salimata Lam is a Mauritanian

human rights defender A human rights defender or human rights activist is a person who, individually or with others, acts to promote or protect human rights. They can be journalists, environmentalists, whistleblowers, trade unionists, lawyers, teachers, housing camp ...

. She is an anti-

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

activist, and national coordinator of the

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

non-governmental organisation S.O.S. Esclaves.

Biography

Lam is the coordinator for S.O.S. Esclaves, a non-governmental organisation founded in 1995 by Mauritanian lawyer Boubacar Ould Messaoud, to tackle the issue of modern slavery. Lam's organisation also advocates against forced marriages. As of August 2015, programs of anti slavery organisations including S.O.S. Esclaves has resulted in the institution of laws in Mauritania that stipulate the increase of prison term for offenders from ten to twenty years as well as criminalizing the act of forced marriages. In a 2015 interview with

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however, Lam indicated that despite the presence of the amended laws in the constitution to tackle slavery and forced marriages in Mauritania, "only one slaveholder has been conclusively prosecuted for owning slaves". Since then, other cases have been successfully prosecuted with the assistance of S.O.S. Esclaves. In 2017, Lam was nominated for the New African Woman in Civil Society Award but lost to

Theresa Kachindamoto Theresa Kachindamoto (born ) is the paramount chief, or ''Inkosi'', of the Dedza District in the central region of Malawi. She has informal authority over more than 900,000 people. She is known for her forceful action in dissolving child marriages ...

Malawi Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeas ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lam, Salimata Mauritanian human rights activists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Women human rights activists