Contact Us

UN refugees chief warns conditions in Western Sahara 'deteriorating'

Long-displaced populations in Western Sahara face increasingly dire conditions as humanitarian aid remains critically underfunded, the UN's top refugee official warned on Friday.

AFP WORLD
Published September 25,2026 08:06 PM
Subscribe

The UN's top official for refugees warned on Friday that conditions for long-displaced people in Western Sahara were getting worse and that their humanitarian needs were starkly underfunded.

"Today conditions are deteriorating, and humanitarian needs remain significantly underfunded," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Barham Salih, himself a former refugee, told the UN Security Council. "But after more than 50 years, managing displacement indefinitely cannot be the measure of our collective ambition. The status quo is untenable, unsustainable."