A/HRC/34/54/Add.1 41. The Government has stepped up efforts to eradicate the practice, which is typically justified on the grounds of tradition or religion. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the efforts to raise awareness and cooperate with religious and cultural leaders. He is concerned, however, that the draft law on sexual and gender-based violence adopted by the Council of Ministers in March 2016 falls short of the international human rights commitments of Mauritania and does not contain any provisions on female genital mutilation. B. Conditions of detention 42. Mauritania has a prison population of approximately 1,800-2,000 detainees, 8 a relatively small number compared to the general population. Nevertheless, conditions of detention are typically inhumane. A majority of detainees are held in the capital;9 the rest are held in smaller detention centres throughout the country. 43. The Special Rapporteur visited a number of facilities for the deprivation of liberty in Nouakchott and the interior, namely in Atar, Tidjikja, Aleg, Boghé and Rosso, as well as the Salahdine military base. He also visited cells and lock-ups of the police and the gendarmerie and pretrial detention facilities and penitentiaries (usually mixed), including a wing for inmates on death row and one for juveniles. In addition, he went to the sole women’s prison, a maximum security penitentiary, detention facilities under the intelligence services’ control, a detention facility for irregular migrants and asylum seekers, and the country’s only juvenile correctional facility and sole psychiatric institution. 1. Overcrowding and inadequate conditions of detention 44. Detention centres throughout the country are overcrowded. Many detention facilities are makeshift and do not have an official capacity, which makes estimating the overpopulation very difficult. The problem is particularly serious in Nouakchott, where the Dar-Naim facility, which has an approximate capacity of 300 inmates, often holds up to 1,000 persons. The other detention facility for men in Nouakchott, the central prison, was operating slightly below capacity at the time of the visit 10 but its juvenile section was severely overcrowded, holding around 65 minors when it was built for approximately 20. Most detention centres in the interior hold between fewer than 10 and about 50 detainees, but facilities are often not large enough to accommodate even such small numbers, and cells are commonly overcrowded. 45. The Special Rapporteur visited a severely overcrowded police station in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Nouakchott, where irregular migrants were being held before deportation. The 20-30 detainees in each of the two cells did not have enough room to lie or even sit down to sleep. Sanitary conditions were abhorrent, as there were no proper toilet facilities or showers. The Special Rapporteur stresses that while those individuals may have 8 9 10 There are 1,873 detainees as at 3 July 2015, according to the annual report of the National Human Rights Commission on the situation of human rights in Mauritania, covering the period 2013-2014. Available from www.cndh.mr/images/rapport_cndh_2015.pdf. According to the Directorate for the Administration of Penitentiaries and Penal Affairs, there are some 1,920 detainees (information gathered during a meeting with the Special Rapporteur held on 25 January 2016). According to the Ministry of Justice, of the 1,229 detainees being held in the three facilities in Nouakchott on 24 January 2016, 995 were in Dar-Naim, 34 in the women’s prison and 203 in the central prison. According to the Directorate for the Administration of Penitentiaries and Penal Affairs, 1,265 detainees were being held in the capital on 25 January 2016. On 27 January 2016, 234 detainees were being held in the prison, which has a capacity of 250. 9