M'Baye was born in 1957, she was forcibly married at age 12 to a 45-year-old man, but fought her family for the chance to attend school. From 1981 to 1985 she studied law and economics at the University of Nouakchott and she became the first female lawyer in her home country. In 1991, Fatimata Mbaye helped to found the Mauritanian Human Rights Association, or AMDH, and became the Association's president in 2006. In 1998, a report on the still-extant and widespread practice of slavery in Mauritania aired on French television, she and the organization's then president, Cheikh Saad Bouh Kamara, were arrested without warrant. She was charged with the crime of being a member of a non-government approved association, sentenced to 13 months in prison, and a large fine. M'Baye is Chair of the Committee for Women's Rights and founder and leader of the Social Commission of the AMDH. She is a consulting lawyer of various organizations and in 1994 she was an observer in the presidential elections in Mauritania. Her commitment to oppression and slavery in Mauritania brought her 1987, a prison sentence of six months. In 1998, she was sentenced to a prison term of thirteen months again because she belonged to an unapproved union. Under the pressure of an international campaign she was pardoned by the country's president. Mbaye began to receive international attention after her work and life was included in "Mauritania: A Question of Rape," a BBC documentary on the convictions of female rape survivors with the crime of zina. In 2013, Mbaye joined a three-person UN in the Central African Republic with Bernard Muna and Philip Alston. This commission worked in a hostile and violent atmosphere and in a constrained manner, but in 2015 released a final report to the Security Council accusing all belligerent parties in the CAR Civil War of crimes against humanity.
Awards
Fatimata Mbaye received the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award for her fight against slavery in Mauritania and racial/ethnic discrimination in 1999. In 2012, Hillary Clinton honored Mbaye as a Hero in the Trafficking in Persons Report. On March 28, 2016, John Kerry, as Secretary of State, recognized Fatimata Mbaye during the 2016 International Women of Courage Awards for her contributions to the legal protection of human rights in Mauritania and her commitment to human dignity, stating: "Fatimata M’Baye has long been a voice of reason and of tolerance in a country plagued by ethnic tensions. As Mauritania’s first woman attorney, Fatimata has taken on some very tough cases. She’s defended the rights of activists and advocated for the prosecution of human traffickers. She helped draft a law criminalizing slavery. And she represents the “committee of widows,” a group seeking justice for the murder of their husbands during a period of upheaval in the late 1980s. Asked about her role, she says, “I could be born white, yellow, Mongolian, or Kurdish, and I would have recognized myself in each of these. For me the value of the human being is above everything." M'Baye has three children.
