Mahmoud’s Story

Mahmoud M'khaitir is the chief of the Moorish district in the city of Keur Madike, where his community and himself were repatriated to in 1989. In 2008, the Wolof community was repatriated to the village, leading to tensions:

“Our (Wolof) brothers returned to this village where they had lived before. At the beginning, we experienced many difficulties in cohabitation with disputes and verbal exchanges that were sometimes quite violent.”

Concordis helped organize a number of dialogues aimed at fostering social cohesion and working out disputes between the Wolof and Moorish communities.

“We live in symbiosis. The two districts form a united village with a single Wolof village chief and his Maure deputy, in this case myself. This situation, which is beneficial to both communities, is the result of Concordis' intervention.”

Concordis has been working in Mauritania since 2013. Our work focuses on building sustainable and resilient peace by empowering local community members to find workable and durable solutions for peace. We train local people to be mediators in the places where they live; to be the voices of peace in their communities. They organise dialogues, conferences and meetings in which the root causes of conflict can be identified and managed peacefully by the community, for the community.

You can find out more about our work in Mauritania by clicking here. If you’d like to read more about the value of local peacebuilding, you can do so by reading our Annual Review 2021.