Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams have returned to south-eastern Mauritania to provide care to Malian refugees and the communities hosting them. Over the past two years in this border region of Hodh Ech Chargui, there has been a steady increase in refugee arrivals. Our activities focus on providing general and specialised 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 JNIM1. This conflict is having devastating effects on communities who are regularly targeted on both sides of the frontlines.
People are continuously arriving in Mauritania, although it remains difficult to establish precise figures due to the presence of multiple entry points scattered along several hundred kilometres of border in the desert. Newly arrived refugees live in villages and camps in Hodh Ech 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.
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To provide free healthcare to 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 for hospital care in Bassikounou and Neima.
In 2025, MSF carried out more than 32,817 consultations, including 851 for mental health and 4,109 for 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 victims and survivors. This work, which is currently being developed, is essential considering the extreme violence that new arrivals are reporting in their places of origin and during their displacement.
The survivors' accounts depict a level of horror rarely seen on such a scale in the region: massacres, sexual violence, abuse, and people being burned alive and beheaded. They also report looting, houses, shops and granaries set on fire, and livestock decimated.
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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 Ech Chargui, access to essential services remains rudimentary in this semi-desert region, which has one of the lowest incomes 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 southeastern Mauritania from 1992 to 1998 and then from 2012 to 2018, MSF is now developing new activities to respond to the urgent needs of victims and survivors of the conflict in Mali who are crossing into Mauritania to seek safety. In Nouadhibou, our teams have also been helping residents and migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers on the Atlantic route since 2024.
JNIM: Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin.
