The mostly peaceful protest movement demanded that President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz institute political, economic, and legal reforms.

Common themes of protest centered around civil-military relations, slavery (which had only recently been outlawed officially in Mauritania but was still widespread in the country),[9] other human rights abuses the opposition accused the government of perpetrating, and economic issues.

[12] Under Aziz's presidency, Mauritania saw notable increases in individual rights and freedoms that ranked among the best in the Arab world, despite the persistence of various economic and social issues, such as high levels of corruption, lack of adequate and appropriate employment opportunities (among young adults and highly educated individuals, respectively), and inadequate standards of living, especially in the capital city of Nouakchott, with almost 20 percent of the population living on less than $1.25 per day.

[13] Following the example of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself on fire the previous month to protest the government of Tunisia, a middle-aged businessman named Yacoub Ould Dahoud burned himself in front of the Presidential Palace in Nouakchott on January 17, 2011.

[15] President Aziz's administration had also recently announced that the government planned to sell the Place d'Bloques (which many considered to be a national symbol) to private investors at auction, a decision that the protestors viewed as the embodiment of government corruption in Mauritania and led to their calls for a reversal of the administration's decision and preservation of the Place d'Bloques.

Various political parties and unions declared that they refused to join what they considered protests with narrow social demands organized by inexperienced young people on Facebook and Twitter.

[13] Authorities initially approved of and did not repress the February 25th protests, leading the demonstrators to reduce their demands from the resignation of senior government officials to calls for reform through measures such as anti-corruption efforts.

Security forces responded with tear gas and batons to disperse the demonstrators, arresting fourteen and severely beating four protestors in the process.

[22] Protestors also claimed that police officers were posing as journalists to capture video that was later analyzed to identify protest leaders and target them for future arrest.

These protests against the prime minister came despite some economic concessions by authorities, including a promise by Laghdaf to create at least 17,000 new jobs, and an offer from the Interior Ministry to negotiate with an appointed representative of the youth movement.

[17] Around the same time, police shot a protestor taking part in a protest coordinated with those in Nouakchott in the northern town of Zouerate in the foot with a live round.

Several opposition members of parliament, for example, denounced the repression of the February 25th Movement's protests and threatened to physically join protestors in the streets to protect them from violence at the hands of security forces.

[13] At the same time, local politicians such as the mayor of the city of Aoujeft, Mohamed El Mokhtar Ould Ehmeyen Amar, resigned from the ruling political party to protest the violence against protestors and support their cause.

Protestors and the February 25th Movement rejected these claims outright and continued to call for changes to government programs and the resignation of Aziz and his regime.

Several days later, on January 28, 2012, Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera ran a story on the Mauritanian protests, characterizing them as "overlooked" due in part to the relative lack of Internet penetration in Mauritania.

Scholars and analysts differ on the reasons behind this failure to overthrow or extract significant concessions from the regime, but possible explanations include internal divisions within the protest movement owing to various factions — each with different motivations, goals, and preferred tactics — failing to collaborate and coordinate action effectively, co-option of the movement by Aziz's government (e.g. Aziz's ruling party forming a youth committee in the legislature), and effective repression of protests and stifling of dissent by security forces.