Embarka sits in her tent, pitched on the sandy ground in the vast expanse of southwestern Algeria’s desert, in between multitudes of such shelters scattered across the sand dunes.Brewing Sahrawi tea over a small fire as she describes fleeing her homeland, her voice breaks: “It is impossible to speak about this because it is a tragic past for us… for days we remained wandering in the desert. We found no one to give us food or drink, and this occupation followed us Sahrawi people—from bombing us to shooting us with weapons and following us everywhere.” (Interview, 2010).
Aza, who lived through the mass flight, describes when soldiers went searching from house to house for Sahrawis on their list: “When soldiers entered and did not find someone,” she says, “they broke glass and stole the jewelry and other valuables they found. One time, they had knives and clashed them together, took clothes from the tent and tore them apart, to scare the ladies in the tent.” (Interview, 2010). Embarka and Aza are among the 173,600 Sahrawi refugees in need of humanitarian aid in Algeria’s Tindouf camps. The refugees have resided there since Morocco and Mauritania invaded North Africa’s Western Sahara in 1975, displacing over half the population.
Life Under Occupation
In February, the Harvard Human Rights Program, Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, the HLS Advocates for Human Rights, and Harvard African Law Association co-hosted an event at Harvard Law School drawing attention to the nearly 50-year plight of the Sahrawis’ struggle for self-determination. Speakers at the event shed light on the implications of the 1975 Madrid Accords, when Spain ceded the Spanish protectorate to Morocco and Mauritania. Despite the International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinion that year concluding that there was no “tie of territorial sovereignty” between the Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco, Morocco continues to occupy the territory to this day.
For generations of Sahrawis who remained in occupied Western Sahara, repression is a daily reality. In 2013, a 14-year-old boy named Abubakk shared his experience with Moroccan police: “I had started to run with my friends in the protest when the police began to follow and scare me. They chased me while on a bike, and I can just remember that I woke up on the earth… Forcing me into the car and blindfolded me, they hit and beat me. Playing psychological games with me, they asked me who had beat me, and removed the blindfold, threatened to rape me, along with other physical threats. Then, they gave me a flag of the Polisario front [the Sahrawi resistance movement that has pursued independence since 1973] and forced me to step on it. I did not want to, but when they began to beat me again, I could not handle that. When I stood on the flag, the police took a picture of me.” (Interview, 2013).
Under occupation, Hassani, a Sahrawi activist in Western Sahara, shares that “Young people grow up seeing their dreams limited by repression… expression for self-determination can land you in prison or worse. Gatherings are banned, waving the Sahrawi flag can be treated as a crime. We are constantly monitored. Many endure physical assaults simply for giving testimony. Our voices are silent unless we echo the official Moroccan narrative. I know dozens personally who have been arbitrarily detained or disappeared. Some have been missing for years. My neighbors have their own son who was kidnapped and disappeared in 1995.” (Interview, 2025).
Amnesty International reports that in January 2024, police “violently dispersed a peaceful demonstration by Sahrawi women activists in Laayoune and subjected protesters to beatings.” Amnesty continues to note that, in February 2024, police prevented a press conference by a group of Sahrawi human rights defenders from taking place in Laayoune. The report records that, in April 2024, the Moroccan army and gendarmerie bulldozed and destroyed the homes of 12 Sahrawi families in Al-Jitir.
“Naming and Shaming” the Unabashed: A Need for more Oversight
Embarka falters in her speech as she cries: “Another thing that breaks my heart is people watching this situation all over the world, people watching what is here in Western Sahara during this long time and not questioning, and there is no way, nothing on the ground happening towards this issue concerning the Sahrawi people.” Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have for years called for a mandate of the UN Peacekeeping Mission to Western Sahara, MINURSO, to include human rights monitoring, as the only modern UN peacekeeping mission without such a mandate. UN Secretary-General António Guterres denounced Morocco’s failure, dating as far back as 2015, to give the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) access to Western Sahara.
Sahrawis are separated by a 1,700-mile berm “heavily contaminated by landmines,” according to the United Nations Mine Action Service. Hassani shares: “Families have been torn apart for decades. We communicate in secret or online, but visiting each other is often impossible.” As a refugee on the other side of the berm, Yougiha notes: “separation is heartbreaking: we rely on memories, letters and phone calls.” (Interview, 2025).
Recently, the UN signaled a public health crisis in the refugee camps. In a June 2025 UN press release, UN agencies, the World Food Program, and the World Health Organization highlight that the Global Acute Malnutrition rate in the refugee camps of Tindouf reached 13.6%, denoting acute conditions by WHO standards. The press release notes that 65% of children and 69% of women of reproductive age suffer from anemia, while one in three children are growth stunted; at the same time, only 34% of US funding committed for the Sahrawi Refugee Response Plan has reached the camps. These humanitarian conditions leave the health and fates of refugee children and their mothers in jeopardy.
Morocco’s systematic violations directly breach its obligations to preserving these rights as a party to the Convention Against Torture, as a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly Article 7: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” and as having acceded to the four Geneva Conventions on July 26, 1956, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which lays out protections for civilians in occupied territories. To prevent violations against Sahrawis from continuing with impunity, the UN Security Council should extend MINURSO’s mandate to encompass human rights monitoring within its peacekeeping mission to Western Sahara. This would ensure “independent, impartial, comprehensive and sustained monitoring of the human rights situation,” which the UN Secretary-General in 2021 called “necessary to ensure the protection of all people in Western Sahara.”
Additionally, the international community can pressure the Moroccan government to allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to enter Western Sahara in accordance with Security Council resolution 2548 (2020) and strengthen the independence and impartiality of its 2018 National Preventive Mechanism Against Torture, given that, in 2021, the UN Committee Against Torture found Morocco in violation of the Convention Against Torture for its detention of Sahrawi political prisoner Omar N’dour.
Until such monitoring mechanisms are established, the human cost of inaction is ongoing torture and ill-treatment of Sahrawis, including children, while leaving refugees in exile and suffering. Yougiha Molay, a young Sahrawi refugee who dreams of returning to her ancestral homeland, shares that life is a “daily struggle, with limited resources, no real home, and constant uncertainty.” In Yougiha’s words, Sahrawis endure “the longing for home and the challenge of rebuilding a life from nothing.” (Interview, 2025).
The Path of Resilience and Hope
Amid these constant challenges and the trauma of displacement, Sahrawis still hold onto rituals that preserve their ancestral connection. One example central to Sahrawi life is the tea ceremony. As the smells of perfumes blend with the strong, sugary scent of her tea-making, with smoky wafts rising in the desert tent air, Embarka says that what is needed for the tea is “charcoal, people, and time.” Fatimatu explains, “The ceremony of tea was a very important moment to transmit history, religion, [and] to teach children about history for Sahrawi people. They talked about the rain, about places they could search for animals, and who was going to win traditional games for youth.” During Spanish colonialism, Sahrawis spoke freely during tea gatherings without fearing the surveillance of authorities. A reminder of the homeland alive in their collective memory, the tea ceremony, offers hope amid their current circumstances.
Even after five decades of suffering, Sahrawis cherish the hope of a pathway forward. Alien Abdarahman, a Sahrawi refugee, shares that: “hope is, in shāʾ Allāh, sometime justice will come, families will reunite, children will grow up free in their land. We often find hope in seeing children laugh and play” (Interview, 2025). Hassani, in Western Sahara, agrees: “As long as we continue to tell our truth, hope lives on.”
Nina Nedrebo is an Ed.M. ’25 Graduate in Education Policy and Analysis at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. After working with UN agencies for Sahrawi refugees in Algeria, teaching in Norway and Minnesota, and most recently in Holyoke, Massachusetts, she is dedicated to understanding and responding to the needs of youth who require early intervention to prevent and address childhood trauma. Nina holds a B.A. in history from Mount Holyoke College, an MBA from the University of St. Thomas, and an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Teaching from Boston University.
Views expressed on Harvard Human Rights Reflections are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of the Human Rights Program or Harvard Law School.
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