The Camps

Where is Western Sahara?

Western Sahara is in North West Africa very near the Canary Islands where many of us go on holiday.

Where exactly are the Sahrawi Refugee Camps?

There are 5 camps situated near the Algerian town of Tindouf . They are spread out over an area of 6,000km2 – roughly the size of Devon. Each camp bears the name of a key town in Western Sahara.

The extreme heat – up to 55 degrees Celsius in July and August – the sandstorms, the constant drought and the rare but devastating torrential rains are just a few examples of how hostile the environment in this part of the Sahara desert is. 

Thousands of young Sahrawi children go to Spain in July and August to avoid the extreme heat under a scheme called Vacaciones en Paz (Holidays in Peace). They are hosted by Spanish families and often go back year after year to the same family.

Life in the Camps

When the Sahrawi women and children reached the place in Algeria where they were safe from the vast Moroccan army they initially lived in their tents and later as they realised they would be there for some time they built houses from sand bricks. These houses have little cement and are very vulnerable to sandstorms and flash floods. You can read more here.

Each family keeps a tent as a reminder that they are not staying in the camps but just waiting to return home to Western Sahara.

With the men defending their homeland from invasion it was largely the women, children and old people who fled into the desert. So it became the role of the women to set the camps up. They are run efficiently and fairly. Sahrawi refugee camps are currently the only ones in the world administered by refugees themselves

They started by setting up schools and hospitals. 

Literacy rates which were very low (5-10%) under Spanish colonisation rose to 90% in the first 20 years of living in the camps. (Oxfam, 1995)

UNICEF reports that “In 2023, 40,050 children aged 3-16 years were enrolled in 89 schools and care centres in the Sahrawi refugee camps. This included more than 5,000 children under the age of 5 in pre-primary education and 320 children with disabilities in special education centres…. The education sector in the camps is community-based and is entirely operated by refugees. Teachers and others education personnel number 1,800 of whom 82 per cent are women” Source here “According to the UN, In 2020, there were 31 dispensaries, four regional hospitals and two central hospitals. These basic services are well organised and community implemented, but are dependent on humanitarian aid. Only 70% of essential medicines are present, and the health system suffers from a lack of essential infrastructure and equipment. You can read more here”

Several thousand Sahrawi have gained degrees from universities in Algeria, Spain and Cuba. This was all in preparation for returning to and effectively running their own country of Western Sahara after the referendum that was promised by the UN in 1991. 

Administrative Structure of the Sahrawi Camps

The Sahrawi refugees are divided into five camps, or wilayas: Aousserd, Boujdour, Dakhla, Laâyoune and Smara.
In addition to these five locations, there is the administrative and political capital, Rabouni, where the different institutions for the Sahrawi refugees’ authorities are located. The wilayas are divided up further for administrative purposes and comprise of 29 districts or daïra The oversight of the daïras and barrios is carried out by officials elected in popular elections by the inhabitants of each daïra or barrio. In turn, each wilaya is led by a governor nominated by the president of the self-proclaimed SADR, who is himself elected by local delegates at the Congress of the Polisario Front.

The Water Situation

The camps are above an aquifer that runs down from the Atlas Mountains so there is water there but digging wells is difficult and expensive. Currently, there are nine wells in Layoune, two in Smara and two in Dakhla. A big problem is that this water is salty and has high levels of fluoride and iodine – well above the standards set by the World Health Organisation. Water is delivered by tanker and each family stores their ration in a tank. This water is for drinking, cooking and washing. According to the WFP (World Food Programme) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), four in ten metal tanks render the water they contain unfit for consumption. According to the same estimations, 62 % of the population in the camps are drinking water at risk of contamination, due in particular to the poor conditions of the tanks. The direct consequences of this situation are evident from the rise in infectious disease, which is currently a major concern for matters of public health.
“Sahrawi refugees receive on average 12 litres per person per day – well below the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) recommended target of 20 litres a day.” You can read more here.  By comparison, in the United Kingdom average daily consumption per person is 142 litres.

In this video Najla Mohamed-Lamin describes the reality of life with so little water. Najla founded the Smara Alsamar Library which aims to educate women and children on health and the environment. She was on the 2023 BBC list of 100 most influential women in the world. You can listen to her here

Najla describes living with scarcity of water in this clip from a video by Wes and Nico when they visited the camps to take part in the 2025 Sahara Marathon. You watch the full video on YouTube @WesandNico