In the vast rocky deserts surrounding Tinduf in southwestern Algeria, the Sahrawi refugee camps have long symbolized one of the world’s most protracted humanitarian crises. Now, after half a century of exile, the situation is entering what many residents and aid workers describe as a dangerous new phase. International assistance is shrinking, food supplies are deteriorating, hospitals are struggling to function, and thousands of families are increasingly unable to meet even their most basic needs.
A sweeping report by the Spanish newspaper El País has revealed the depth of the crisis unfolding across the five Sahrawi refugee camps, where roughly 173,600 people remain stranded in limbo decades after fleeing Western Sahara following Morocco’s annexation of the territory in 1975. Today, nearly 90 percent of the camp population depends on humanitarian assistance for survival. Yet that support system is rapidly eroding due to dramatic cuts in international funding, particularly following the closure of the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, and broader reductions in European aid budgets.
For many families, the impact is immediate and brutal. Mohamed Brahim, a 40-year-old nurse and deputy director at Rabuni National Hospital, told El País that despite working in one of the camps’ central medical facilities, he survives on the equivalent of only 150 euros every three months. To support his family, he also runs a small shop and takes occasional side jobs whenever possible. Even then, he says, the struggle is relentless.
“How am I supposed to feed my family with two kilos of rice from humanitarian aid each month?” he asked. “There are families today that cannot even afford a piece of chicken once a week.”
The humanitarian system that sustains the camps is under extraordinary pressure. According to Buhubeini Yahia, president of the Sahrawi Red Crescent, aid now functions merely as a temporary painkiller for a population enduring decades of political abandonment. Speaking to El País from the organization’s central warehouses, he described the effort as “giving a patient a paracetamol to ease the pain.”
The financial collapse behind the worsening conditions is stark. In 2024, Washington contributed more than eight million dollars toward refugee operations in Algeria, representing nearly half the funding received by the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, in the country. By 2025, that amount had dropped to just over two million dollars. As a result, the UNHCR budget allocated specifically to Sahrawi refugees in Tinduf fell from 9.4 million dollars in 2024 to 5.6 million dollars in 2025.
The consequences have spread through every sector of camp life. Food distributions have become smaller and increasingly delayed. Residents told El País that staples once regularly included in aid packages, such as canned sardines, beans, eggs, and cooking supplies, have either disappeared or become rare seasonal deliveries during Ramadan. Humanitarian stockpiles are now dangerously depleted, with some emergency reserves entirely exhausted.
At distribution points in the Smara camp, workers unload sacks of rice and pasta supplied by the World Food Programme under growing logistical strain. Mariam Jairi, who oversees one local distribution center, said deliveries arrive later than before and contain fewer products. In some cases, food intended for one month has still not been fully distributed by the beginning of the next.
Water shortages have become equally severe. Residents across the camps report increasingly long waits for tanker deliveries while temperatures regularly soar beyond 50 degrees Celsius during the summer months. According to Eduardo Irigoyen Soria, director of the NGO Association of Workers and Technicians Without Borders, the camp water system no longer meets the United Nations minimum emergency standard of 20 liters per person per day.
Just two years ago, the refugee camps operated with 36 water tankers. In 2025, UNHCR funding still covered 26 vehicles, including maintenance and staff. That support disappeared entirely in early 2026. Despite partial replacement funding from European sources, only 16 tankers now remain operational across all five camps.
“The impact has been brutal,” Irigoyen told El País. “There will be longer waits, worse access, and more interruptions.”
The humanitarian decline is also devastating education and healthcare services. In the Auserd camp, preschool director Meimuna Mohamed Fadel explained that schools increasingly survive through improvisation and personal sacrifice. Teachers earn around 30 euros per month, while playground equipment is constructed from recycled metal and broken furniture. School supplies have nearly vanished. UNICEF has warned that more than 40,000 Sahrawi primary school students risk losing access to education because of funding shortages threatening the salaries of volunteer teachers.
Healthcare facilities are under similarly intense pressure. Doctors and nurses report critical shortages of insulin, medications, and functioning medical equipment. At Rabuni National Hospital, some departments operate with only a fraction of the resources they require. Physiotherapy services reportedly receive just 20 percent of the funding needed to function effectively.
The crisis is compounded by a growing exodus of educated young Sahrawis seeking work abroad. Local workers employed by international NGOs have already lost jobs due to funding cuts. Luali Bah, a former project manager for an Italian aid organization, told El País he lost his position after U.S. financing disappeared in 2025. Supporting four children, he now survives through occasional translation work and temporary contracts.
“The majority of people have no monthly income,” Bah said. “They survive by asking neighbors for help or finding ways to complete their daily diet.”
The migration wave has hollowed out essential services inside the camps. Nursing schools continue training healthcare workers, but many graduates leave almost immediately for Spain or other European countries in search of better opportunities. Mohamed Brahim recalled how nine nurses attempted the dangerous sea crossing to Europe earlier this year aboard a migrant boat.
“If everyone leaves, who will care for the elderly, the women, the children?” he asked.
The broader political backdrop has only deepened feelings of abandonment among Sahrawis. Fifty years after the proclamation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, hopes for a referendum on self-determination have steadily faded. Increasingly, parts of the international community and the United Nations have shifted toward supporting Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the most realistic solution for Western Sahara, sidelining the Polisario Front’s long-standing demand for independence.
For younger generations born in exile, frustration is growing into despair. Many have never seen the homeland their parents fled in 1975, yet they continue living in a hostile desert environment with little prospect of political resolution or economic stability. One young Sahrawi man told El País that exile has effectively condemned families to separation, with survival now depending on relatives working abroad and sending money back to the camps.
“The Sahrawi people are not suffering only from hunger,” he said. “They suffer from the waiting, from the years passing in this inhospitable place.”
As global attention shifts elsewhere and donor fatigue deepens, the camps of Tinduf remain suspended between humanitarian dependence and political uncertainty. For thousands of Sahrawi families, survival increasingly depends not on promises of peace or diplomacy, but on whether the next shipment of food, medicine, or water arrives before the current supplies run out.
