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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2017
The Sahrawi people, who have long lived in the western part of the Sahara, have been housed in refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, since 1975—the year that Morocco took de facto control of Western Sahara. Their situation poses many questions, including those regarding the status of their state-in-exile, the role of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and the length of their displacement. The conditions in the Tindouf camps present a paradigmatic case study of the liminal space inhabited by long-term refugees. Over the decades, residents have transformed these camps into a state-like structure with their own political and administrative institutions, which has enabled the international community to gain time to search for an acceptable political solution to the long-term conflict between the Polisario Front (the Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement) and the Moroccan government. The existence of a state-like structure, however, should not itself be understood as the ultimate solution for the thousands of people in these camps, who are currently living in extreme poverty, surviving on increasingly meager international aid, and enduring an exceptionally long wait for the favorable conditions whereby they may return to their place of origin.
Editor's note: This original essay was translated from Spanish by Maria Codina, with the assistance of Drew Thompson. The editors also wish to acknowledge the contribution of Prof. Joy Gordon, Ignacio Ellacuria, S.J. Chair in Social Ethics at Loyola University-Chicago, without whose initiative and support the publication of this essay would not have been possible.
1 The agreements were nullified by the United Nations. However, the physical occupation of territory and the failure to resolve the conflict consolidated Morocco as the de facto “administrator” of the territory.
2 On the history of the conflict see Aguirre, José Ramón Diego, Guerra en el Sahara (Madrid: Ediciones Istmo, 1991)Google Scholar.
3 Algeria's support for the Polisario Front should be understood in the context of enmity with Morocco over territory and leadership of the North African region in their confrontation in 1963 in the “War of the Sands.” For more information see Mohsen-Finan, Khadija, Sahara Occidental: Les enjeux d'un conflit regional (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1997)Google Scholar.
4 The wall was built with American, French, and Spanish funding. Its purpose was to stall the conflict and to militarily exhaust the Polisario Front, preventing incursions into the territory and radically severing ties between combatants and the populations of cities of the occupied Sahara.
5 For more on the second stage of diplomatic negotiations, see de Froberville, Martine, Sahara Occidental: La confiance perdue (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1996)Google Scholar; and Arias, Carlos Fernandez, “Western Sahara: One Year after Baker,” Foreign Policy, no. 107 (2005)Google Scholar.
6 The Sahrawi borrow the term from the Palestinians to refer to manifestations of resistance against occupation and the living conditions of the Sahrawi people: repression, lack of access to basic services, discrimination, high unemployment, exploitation of natural resources, and the like.
7 The Sahrawi may make up as little as 20 percent of the population currently living in Western Sahara. Sobero, Yolanda, Sahara: Memoria y Olvido (Barcelona: Ediciones Planeta, 2010)Google Scholar.
8 For more information on the third phase of the conflict in Western Sahara, see Sobero, Sahara; and Martín, Carmen Gómez, “Sahara Occidental: Quel scénario après Gdeim Izik?” L'Année du Maghreb VIII (2012)Google Scholar.
9 The camps are located in the Draa Hamada, a stony desert formed by rocky plateaus.
10 In recent years, another camp has been forming around the “February 27 School,” one of the leading schools for girls.
11 There is a distance of between 20 and 60 kilometers between each wilaya, except Dakhla, which is 200 kilometers from other sites. The airport in the Algerian city of Tindouf is between 20 and 50 kilometers from the administrative center of Rabuni, the camp of Laayoune, and the camp of Smara.
12 Martín, Carmen Gómez, La migracion saharui en España: Estrategias de visibilidad en el tercer tiempo del exilio (Saarbrücken, Germany: Editorial Académia Española, 2011)Google Scholar.
13 According to a 2008 report by Doctors of the World, UNHCR, and the World Food Programme, malnutrition in the camps affects 61 percent of children and 55 percent of women. The report noted that the recommended number of kilocalories a person should consume per day is between 1,200 and 1,500. In the Sahrawi camps, it stood at 698 kilocalories per day and only reached 800 kilocalories per day when supplemented with goat or camel meat. See Alcalá, Irene Pérez, “Estado nutricional y salud reproductora de la mujer saharaui,” in Carro, Cristina Bernis, Giménez, María Rosario López, and López, Pilar Montero, eds., Determinantes biológicos y sociales de la maternidad en el siglo XXI: Mitos y realidades (Madrid: IUEM-UAM, 2009), pp. 231–48Google Scholar.
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18 Werker, “Refugee Camp Economies.”
19 UNHCR, “Informe: Tendencias globales,” Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiado, 2012a, p. 12.
20 Some seven million refugees have returned to their home countries over the past ten years. However, as UNHCR itself points out, most cases occurred in countries of poor stability: Angola, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Zambia. See UNHCR, “Informe: La situación de los refugiados en el mundo. En busca de la solidaridad,” Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados, 2012b.
21 UNHCR, “Informe: Tendencias globales” (2012a).
22 UNHCR, “Informe: La situación de los refugiados en el mundo” (2012b).
23 Black, Richard, “Refugee Camps Not Really Reconsidered: Response by Richard Black,” Forced Migration Review 3, Debate (1998)Google ScholarPubMed.
24 Cited in Crisp, Jeff and Jacobsen, Karen, “Refugee Camps Reconsidered,” Forced Migration Review 3, Debate (1998)Google Scholar.
25 Ibid., p. 28.
26 This is the case of the Dadaab camp in northern Kenya. It was established by UNHCR to collect Somali refugees after the fall of Mogadishu in 1991, but as the years went on it welcomed a mixed population, composed mostly of Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians, Ugandans, and Rwandans. See de Montclos, Marc-Antoine Perouse and Kagwanja, Peter Mwangi, “Refugee Camps or Cities? The Socio-economic Dynamics of the Dadaab and Kakuma Camps in Northern Kenya,” Journal of Refugee Studies 13, no. 2 (2000), pp. 205–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Two facts help explain this situation. The population fled the Spanish Sahara in 1975–1976 and lost Spanish nationality through the application of Royal Decree 2258 of August 10, 1976. Moreover, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has never been recognized internationally; consequently, Saharan nationality is not accepted. As a result, much of the population living in the camps has been condemned to statelessness.
28 Montclos and Kagwanja, “Refugee Camps or Cities?”
29 Farah, Randa, “Refugee Camps in the Palestinian and Sahrawi National Liberation Movements: A Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Palestine Studies 38, no. 2 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Tents made of leather and used by the nomadic peoples of the desert.
31 Gómez Martín, La migración saharaui en España.
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33 UNHCR, “Informe: Tendencias globales” (2012a), p. 13.
34 See Bernabé López García, “Iniciativas de negociación en el Sáhara Occidental: Historia de la búsqueda de una ‘solución política,’” ARI, no. 85 (2007); and de Larramendi, Miguel Hernando, “La cuestión del Sáhara Occidental como factor de impulso del proceso de descentralización marroquí,” Revista de Estudios Internacionales Mediterráneos, no. 9 (2010), pp. 132–41Google Scholar.
35 Chimni, B. S., “The Birth of a ‘Discipline’: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies,” Journal of Refugee Studies 22, no. 1 (2009), pp. 11–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
