🔗 Share this article

Many days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his home since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator mentally and physically fit, and permits him to assess the wellbeing of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he left Mali as Tuareg rebels clashed with the army in his native Timbuktu area.

After four years as a refugee, he went back and worked for a year as a social worker before transitioning to a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again compelled him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels especially sad for the young people of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their nation [and] that is painful because a refugee always has split affections: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he hopes to go back to one day.”

Originally planned as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In also, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees live in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.

Government representatives say the area is the third-biggest human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, fleeing a jihadist insurgency that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue crucial nutrition programmes for malnourished children and mothers due to budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the features of a long-term settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children signed up in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, police patrols protect the camp from the threat of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new responsibilities with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and operate an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those maimed by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also promoting awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s needs are clear.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough financial support or materials,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose what little we have, but it is not enough for the demands of the camp.”

In the schools, the children are served one meal daily by WFP. At one school with 100 children per class, six or seven of them sit by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few beans.

“We’re still offering school meals, staple provisions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most at-risk while working relentlessly to acquire new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are supported by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only products in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate business programmes to help refugees grow crops and keep animals so they can earn an income and boost their quality of life.

Though Malha supervises everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ assist the most disadvantaged households, his heart yearns to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you lose everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you are entirely reliant on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“We thank the Mauritanian authorities and the humanitarian organisations for what they have done for us but it is not the same as being in your own country, working with your own hands and living with self-respect.”