U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 1999 - Mauritania

An estimated 30,000 Mauritanians were refugees at the end of 1998, including about 25,000 in Senegal and 5,000 in Mali. Approximately 10,000 Mauritanian refugees repatriated during the year.

Mauritania hosted more than 20,000 refugees from Western Sahara at year's end. Mauritania no longer hosted significant numbers of refugees from Mali.

Refugees from Mauritania

Ethnic conflict in Mauritania during 1989-90 culminated in the government's expulsion of approximately 75,000 black Mauritanians from the country. An additional 15,000 or so nomadic Mauritanians who were in Mali during the upheaval also were barred from returning to Mauritania, as were children born to expellees.

Mauritanian authorities claimed that the refugee populations were not Mauritanian citizens. Human rights organizations charged that Mauritanian leaders – predominantly fair-skinned, Arabic-speaking "Moors" – sought to purge their country's black population and confiscated vacant property the refugees left behind.

The total number of Mauritanian refugees who have repatriated is a matter of conjecture. Some 7,000 people officially repatriated from Senegal and Mali in 1998 to resettlement areas monitored by UNHCR. At least 30,000 Mauritanian refugees have officially returned to these areas since 1992.

These statistics, however, do not include refugees who have repatriated spontaneously to other areas of Mauritania. It is believed that several thousand refugees returned to Mauritania and settled at unmonitored sites and urban areas during 1998, as in previous years. The combination of official and unofficial repatriations totaled approximately 10,000 in 1998, and far more than 30,000 returnees since 1992.

Populations of entire villages have returned, in some cases. Government treatment of returnees has varied significantly, according to UNHCR. Some returnees have managed to regain their previous land; some have received new property roughly equivalent to the land they lost; other returnees have failed to receive compensation of any kind from local authorities. Some returnees continued to complain that government officials had not yet issued them new national identity papers.

The government has gradually increased UNHCR's access to returnee areas since 1995. UNHCR's Special Rapid Insertion Program (PSIR), which began in 1996 in cooperation with the Mauritanian Red Crescent, funded community development projects in agriculture, health, education, water resources, animal husbandry, and small business assistance. The PSIR program expended $360,000 on reintegration projects during 1998 and ended in December.

Many Mauritanian refugees in neighboring countries previously indicated that they would repatriate only if Mauritania guaranteed their citizenship, compensated for their losses, and allowed UNHCR to mount an organized repatriation program with safeguards to protect returnees.

Mauritanian officials have refused to acknowledge blanket citizenship for the entire refugee population. The government insisted that it would evaluate citizenship on a case-by-case basis.

Refugees from Western Sahara

UNHCR and other international aid agencies have had virtually no contact with most ethnic Sahrawi refugees from Western Sahara who live in Mauritania. The refugees fled to Mauritania in the 1970s because of war for control over Western Sahara. The Mauritanian government did not consider them to be refugees.

When 1998 began, UNHCR estimated that 5,000 to 10,000 Sahrawi refugees were in Mauritania. However, a UN registration program during 1998 found that up to 23,000 Sahrawis in Mauritania were eligible for repatriation to Western Sahara, including 5,000 adult males who were potentially eligible to vote in a referendum on Western Sahara's independence.

The refugees' planned repatriation to Western Sahara failed to occur during 1998 because the scheduled referendum was canceled. The largely self-sufficient refugee population continued to live in Mauritania at year's end.

Refugees from Mali

Some 600 Malian refugees repatriated from Mauritania during the year, according to UNHCR. They had fled to Mauritania in 1991, seeking protection from violence and government crackdowns in their own country. Virtually no Malian refugees remained in Mauritania at year's end.