Thousands of Malian refugees fleeing conflict in neighbouring Mauritania are facing “appalling” conditions in a UN-run camp, a medical charity has warned.
Conditions are so bad that healthy people are getting ill after they arrive, says Medecins Sans Frontieres.
There is only one toilet for every 3,000 residents and new arrivals are having to build their own shelters.
The situation has worsened, MSF says, since France led a military intervention in Mali in January.
Some 70,000 refugees now live at the Mbera camp in a remote part of Mauritania, MSF says, put off from returning home by enduring ethnic tensions in northern Mali.
“More than 100,000 people from northern Mali are currently displaced within their country or have escaped abroad as refugees,” says Henry Gray, emergency co-ordinator for MSF.
“Most of the refugees are from the Tuareg and Arab communities. They fled pre-emptively, often for fear of violence due to their presumed links with Islamist or separatist groups. Their home in northern Mali is still in the grip of fear and mistrust.”
High death rates
The MSF report, Stranded in the Desert, is based on testimony from more than 100 residents of the Mbera camp.
Refugees are receiving only 11 litres (2.9 gallons) of water a day in 50C (122F) heat, and there is a desperate shortage of toilets, though more are now being built.
An MSF study at the camp last November revealed a critical nutrition situation, with mortality rates above the emergency threshold for children under two years old.
And conditions have worsened since the French intervention in Mali prompted a fresh wave of 15,000 refugees.
New arrivals are having to wait more than a month to receive housing materials, and are having to construct makeshift shelters from sticks and scraps of cloth.
“The number of consultations in MSF’s clinics in the Mbera camp has increased from 1,500 to 2,500 per week,” MSF says.
“The number of children admitted per week for severe malnutrition has more than doubled, from 42 to 106, despite the nutritional status of the new refugees being generally good when assessed on arrival in the camp.”
MSF says the situation has improved in recent weeks.
But it is urgently calling on aid organisations operating inside the camp – which is overseen by the UN refugee agency UNHCR – to redouble their efforts to provide shelter, clean water, latrines, and food at minimum humanitarian standards.