Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Sections
 

Sahrawis (in Algeria)

 

The Sahrawi refugee situation has been referred to as one of the most protracted refugee situations in existence, and is UNHCR's second oldest caseload. Approximately 155,000 Sahrawi refugees have been living in exile in southwestern Algeria for more than 35 years, and many maintain that repatriation remains the only acceptable solution to their plight.

Their homeland, the Western Sahara, became a Spanish colony in 1886. Although the United Nations Decolonisation Committee requested that Spain organise and hold a referendum for self-determination for the territory's inhabitants, Spain withdrew from the territory in 1975 without having held the referendum or having officially decolonised the ‘Spanish Sahara’. Despite a ruling by the International Court of Justice denying Moroccan or Mauritanian claims to the territory, both countries seized it and a violent struggle between the Sahrawi anti-colonial movement, the Polisario Front, and the two armies ensued. First internally displaced, many Sahrawis fled across the Algerian border after being bombed with napalm and phosphate bombs. The Sahrawi refugee camps were established in southwestern Algeria near the Algerian military town of Tindouf, where Sahrawi refugees remain to date. The Polisario Front proclaimed the birth of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in February 1976. A ceasefire was brokered by the OAU and the UN in 1988, and a UN mission was established to hold the long-awaited referendum for self-determination. With persistent disagreements about voter eligibility, the referendum has never been held, and the Western Sahara continues to be a non-self-governing territory. Tensions and violence continue in the territory, with major confrontations between Sahrawi protesters and Moroccan security forces occurring regularly, including in December 2010.

Unlike most other refugee camps, the Sahrawi camps are administered and controlled by the Polisario/SADR. They have high levels of self-management and have developed functioning institutions, a police force, an army and parallel state and religious legal systems. Both the Polisario and Morocco have engaged in intense political lobbying to win support for their territorial claims, and the SADR has established full diplomatic relations with over 70 states since the conflict began in the 1970s. Pending a decision on the legal status of the Western Sahara, or a significant decrease in political tensions between Morocco and the Polisario, durable solutions for Sahrawi refugees seem unattainable.

Online Documents

Offline Resources

  • Chatty, D., Fiddian-Qasmiyeh E. and Crivello, G. (2010) 'Identity With/out Territory: Sahrawi Refugee Youth in Transnational Space' in D. Chatty (Ed.) Deterritorialised Afghan and Sahrawi Youth: Refugees from the Margins of the Middle East (Oxford: Berghahn Books), pp. 35-82.
  • Crivello, G. and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2010) 'The Ties that Bind: Sahrawi Children and the Mediation of Aid in Exile' in D. Chatty (Ed.) Deterritorialised Afghan and Sahrawi Youth: Refugees from the Margins of the Middle East (Oxford: Berghahn Books), pp. 83-116.
  • Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2011) 'The Pragmatics of Performance: Putting 'faith' in aid in the Sahrawi refugee camps' Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 24(3), pp. 533-547.
  • Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2011) 'Paradoxes of Refugees' Educational Migration: Promoting self-sufficiency or renewing dependency?' Comparative Education, Vol. 47(3).
  • Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2011) 'Histories of Displacement: Intersections between ethnicity, gender and class' Journal of North African Studies,  Vol.16(1), pp. 31-48.
  • Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2010) '"Ideal" Refugee Women and Gender Equality Mainstreaming in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps: "Good Practice" for Whom?' Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 29(2), pp. 64-84.
  • Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2009) 'Representing Sahrawi Refugees' "Educational Displacement" to Cuba: Self-sufficient agents or manipulated victims in conflict?' Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 22(3), pp. 323-350.
  • Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2010) 'Concealing Violence Against Women in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps: The politicisation of victimhood' in H. Bradby and G. Lewando-Hundt (eds.) Global Perspectives on War, Gender and Health: The Sociology and Anthropology of Suffering (Farnham: Ashgate).

Relevant Organisations