Page 39 - Coespu 2018-4

Animal and human health in the Sahrawi refugee camps

By Giorgia ANGELONI and Jennifer CARR

Health challenges in the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Algerian desert are faced by both human and
animal populations, and therefore responses must benefit both.
The Sahrawi refugee camps are situated close to the Algerian settlement of Tindouf and have grown
from camps to de facto cities since mass displacement of the Sahrawis in 1975. Following conflict
in the former Spanish Western Sahara, thousands of people crossed the border into Algeria, settling
in refugee camps. Forty years later, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates the camp
population at approximately 173,6001 refugees. Each case of mass forced displacement has a unique
set of circumstances and resulting health challenges. However, from the perspective of the
international humanitarian community, at the time of crisis the humanitarian concerns are namely
that – human concerns. The needs of people in acute distress shape the form of the response; food,
water, shelter, protection, sanitation
and medical care are provided for
humans. The presence of animals is
not ignored; indeed it is often noted
in official reports and needs
assessments conducted
by humanitarian agencies. A League
of Red Cross Societies mission in
June 1977, for example, reported an
increase in the numbers of animals
in the Sahrawi camps over the
previous year – an increase that
enabled the occasional addition of
meat to diets. Alice Wilson’s
research suggests that most Sahrawi
refugees in exile were familiar (from
childhood or more recent
experience) with life in a nomadic
encampment, with sedentarisation
being a fairly new process in the
mid-1970s and early 1980s.2
However, during the initial mass
displacement, few animals were
transported by the refugees and by the 2000s opportunities for mobile pastoralist practices remained
constrained, not least by the inhospitable environment. Life in a refugee camp in the middle of
the desert deprives the population of the hope of food self-sufficiency, leaving them largely
dependent on international aid. In fact, non-supported survival in the desert is guaranteed only by
nomadic practices and any enforced sedentarism of the refugee camp disrupts and constrains these
practices. However, it also provides opportunities for the creation of new responses led by the
refugees themselves.

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