As of 2026. No comprehensive registration of the camp population has ever been completed, so all current figures remain planning estimates rather than counts.
Sahrawis who fled Western Sahara during the Moroccan and Mauritanian takeover of the territory in 1975-1976 have lived for five decades in camps near Tindouf in the Algerian desert, administered by the Polisario Front, which also has its seat of government there. Residents move freely within the camps and to Tindouf town, but travel further into Algeria requires a movement permit issued by the Polisario authorities, valid for about 15 days, and return to the parts of Western Sahara under Moroccan control is prevented by the 2,700 km sand berm, its minefields and Moroccan forces. The camps have no productive land and depend almost entirely on international food aid; a WFP ration cut of about 30 per cent from November 2023 worsened rates of anaemia among women and stunting among children. The population figure is itself part of the political dispute, because the number of Sahrawis bears on the electorate of the self-determination referendum that MINURSO was created to hold in 1991 and that has never taken place. As of 2026 the political process remains blocked, no repatriation has occurred, and a third generation has been born in the camps.
The Polisario Front administering the camps on Algerian territory with Algerian consent, with return to Western Sahara blocked by the Moroccan-built sand wall and the unresolved status of the territory
Spain's 1974 census of the Sahara enumerated 73,497 Sahrawis; that census was intended as the electoral roll for a referendum that never took place, and it remains the reference population for the UN identification process. Morocco has always argued that it undercounted Sahrawis living outside the territory.
Human Rights Watch's 2014 investigation of the Tindouf camps found 'no evidence of any patterns of serious abuse' and reported no significant mortality; the only killings it documented were two refugees shot by Algerian border police near the Mauritanian border in January 2014, in disputed circumstances. Camp population itself is contested — UN agencies plan on around 90,000, WFP and UNHCR on around 125,000, and the Polisario and Algeria claim about 165,000 — but no death range exists.
Human Rights Watch's 'Off the Radar' (2014) documented eight civilian men held in military detention beyond legal limits, one long-standing incommunicado disappearance case, isolated torture allegations, and the persistence of 'certain practices of slavery, including enforced domestic servitude' among a small minority, while explicitly finding no pattern of serious abuse.
Algeria