Fatimata Mbaye or Fatimata M'Baye is an international and Mauritanian human rights lawyer and advocate. 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; after attending high school, Mbaye studied law and economics at the University of Nouakchott and became the first woman to practice law in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.