Sahrawi Refugee Camps

The Sahrawi exile camps that have stood in the desert south of Tindouf since 1976

The four main Sahrawi refugee camps — Smara, Laayoune, Dakhla, and Awserd — sit on the open hammada some 30 to 170 kilometres south-east of Tindouf. They are named for the towns the inhabitants left behind in the Spanish (now Moroccan-controlled) Sahara, and they have been functioning as the de facto capital of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic since 1976. Most visitors arrive on aid-agency, journalist, or solidarity visas through Algiers or through Polisario representations abroad — turning up in Tindouf without arrangement is impractical.

Inside the camps you find tents pitched alongside mud-brick houses, schools running in shifts, well-stocked clinics, a small museum of the Western Sahara war, and a remarkable openness to outside visitors. The annual Sahara International Film Festival, FiSahara, brings filmmakers and audiences to the Dakhla camp in late spring and is the most accessible way for non-aid-workers to see the place. The conditions are hard — extreme summer heat, dust, periodic flash floods — but the camps are stable, safe, and self-organised.

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A story
When Mauritania and Morocco moved into the Spanish Sahara in late 1975, tens of thousands of Sahrawi civilians fled across the border into Algeria and were settled by the Polisario Front in a string of camps near Tindouf. Almost fifty years later the camps remain. Their inhabitants have built schools, hospitals, a museum, a national assembly, and a government in exile from almost nothing. They are among the longest-running refugee camps in the world.

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