MSF MAURITANIA: MSF support to Malian refugees
27 January 2026 - MSF teams have returned to south-eastern Mauritania to provide care to Malian refugees, whose numbers have been steadily increasing over the past two years in this border region of Hodh El Chargui, and the local communities hosting them. Activities focus on providing primary and secondary healthcare, particularly paediatric and women's health services, and on caring for victims of violence.
According to the UNHCR and the government, Mauritania hosts nearly 300,000 refugees and asylum seekers, including approximately 170,000 registered Malians, most of whom were forced into exile by the war that broke out in 2012. However, a growing number are fleeing the current conflict between the Malian armed forces and their Russian partners and armed groups, including JNIM, with devastating effects on communities regularly targeted on both sides of the front lines.
Arrivals in Mauritania are continuous, although it remains difficult to establish precise figures due to the presence of multiple entry points scattered across the desert along several hundred kilometres of border. Newly arrived refugees live in villages and camps in Hodh El Chargui, while the Mbera camp houses a large proportion of those who arrived in previous years. They often cross the border in a state of advanced fatigue, destitution and trauma, having been victims or direct witnesses of violence.
To provide free healthcare to particularly vulnerable new arrivals, MSF teams offer general, paediatric and reproductive and sexual health consultations, vaccinations and treatment for severe acute malnutrition in healthcare facilities in Douenkara, Fassala, Aghor and Tinagwitine. The consultations are also open to Mauritanian patients. Mobile clinics, currently in Abaghé and El Mekhel, also enable us to respond on an ad hoc basis to arrivals and the most urgent needs. We refer the most critical patients to hospital care in Bassikounou and Neima.
In 2025, more than 32,817 consultations were carried out as part of MSF's activities, including 851 in mental health and 4,109 in reproductive health.
We are also developing comprehensive care for victims of violence, including mental health care, social support and protection, and a community network to better identify and refer survivors. This work, which is currently being developed, is essential considering the extreme violence reported by new arrivals in their places of origin and during their displacement. Massacres, sexual violence, abuse, people burned alive or beheaded: the survivors' accounts depict a level of horror rarely seen on such a scale in the region. They also report looting, houses, shops and granaries set on fire, and livestock decimated.
Some are also fleeing threats and restrictions imposed by armed groups on residents of localities they accuse of supporting the army. Air strikes, particularly by drones, are intensifying. In early January, 54 wounded people were treated by MSF teams and the Malian Ministry of Health after an air strike hit the Dogofry market.
While Malian refugees find a safer environment in Hodh El Chargui, access to essential services remains very rudimentary in this semi-desert region, which is one of the poorest in the country. Ranking 156th on the Human Development Index, Mauritania saw in 2025 the disappearance of US aid, which accounted for a large part of the funding for the international humanitarian response in the country. Mutual aid between refugees and residents is not enough, resources are running out and the limited humanitarian aid available is mainly concentrated in the Mbera camp.
Present in south-eastern Mauritania from 1992 to 1998 and then from 2012 to 2018, MSF is now developing new activities to respond to the urgent needs of survivors of the conflict in Mali who are crossing into Mauritania to seek safety. In Nouadhibou, our teams have also been helping migrants, refugees and asylum seekers on the Atlantic route and to vulnerable residents since 2024.