557 research outputs found
Dormancy and Revitalization: The fate of ethnobotanical knowledge of camel forage among Sahrawi nomads and refugees of Western Sahara
Get PDFKnowledge about forage is fundamental to the survival of pastoral populations around the world. In this paper, we address the knowledge of camel forage of Sahrawi nomads and refugees of Western Sahara. We analyze the distribution of this knowledge through cultural consensus analysis and develop an explanation for intra-cultural variation based on changing processes of knowledge transmission. In total, 100 plant species were free-listed by informants, with five species (i.e., Acacia tortilis (Forssk.) Hayne, Nucularia perrinii Batt., Astragalus vogelii (Webb) Bornm., Panicum turgidum Forssk., and Stipagrostis plumosa Munro ex T.Anderson) found to be culturally highly salient. These five represent five local categories of forage that are necessary for camel management in the Western Sahara desert. The Sahrawi listed 25 forage plants that influence the taste and properties of camel milk, demonstrating that cultural values, as much as survival functions, underpin local knowledge systems. Perhaps unsurprisingly, age and nomadic experience are positively correlated with forage knowledge. Forced displacement and sedentarization are hypothesized as causes of progressive non-use of this knowledge and the lack of its transmission to younger generations of refugees. Nonetheless, across the study area, refugees are re-engaging with pastoralism and nomadism, which is leading to a revitalization of forage knowledge and its transmission. This should be regarded as an adaptation pathway for refugees
Sahrawi Livelihoods in Algeria: Building self-sufficiency
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Over 40 years ago, Oxfam began working with Sahrawi refugees living in extremely harsh conditions in camps in the Saharan desert of western Algeria, who had fled their homes as a result of ongoing disputes over territory in Western Sahara. Since then, the Sahrawi refugees have been largely dependent on humanitarian aid from a number of agencies, but increasing needs and an uncertain funding future have meant that the agencies are having to adapt their programme approaches. Oxfam has met these new challenges by combining the existing aid with new resilience-building activities, supporting the community to lead self-sufficient and fulfilling lives in the arid desert environment.
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40 Years of Exile: Have the Sahrawi refugees been abandoned by the international community?
Get PDFForty years after the Sahrawi refugee crisis began the social pressures on the men and women who live in these camps and the problems concerning their humanitarian situation are becoming ever more unbearable. Today, their voices must be heard.
Oxfam has worked with Sahrawi refugees since the 1970s. Based on this experience, this report gives tangible insights in their way of living, their aspirations and their growing frustration over what they consider the inability of the international community to uphold their rights.
In order to bring about a definitive resolution to the crisis, Oxfam calls on the international community to increase its efforts to ensure dignified lives for these people and to ensure that international law is respected.</p
The Sahrawi Youth & National Identity
No full textThe Western Sahara conflict has been in place for decades, since the Moroccan occupation of the Western Sahara territory in the 1970s, and is the cause of the displacement of thousands of Sahrawis from their homeland to the Algerian refugee camps. The Sahrawi youth in Tindouf, Algeria have lived from the moment they were born in a conflict that is yet to be resolved. Consequently, this conflict has impacted Sahrawi youth in several ways. The aim of this project is to investigate why the Sahrawi youth’s national identity is characterized and determined by the ongoing conflict in the disputed land of Western Sahara. Importantly, we wish to understand the concept of national identity in the context of protracted refugee situations. Through conducting an analysis of interviews with young Sahrawi participants as well as academic texts we are able to define the importance of national identity for the Sahrawi protracted refugee situation
Poetics and Politics: Digital Interventions in Sahrawi Cultural Production
Get PDFThis study addresses how Sahrawi authors are employing social media in support of the Sahrawi cause. Via new media literary studies and theories of postcolonial nostalgias, this article demonstrates how Sahrawi digital interventions differ from, and capitalize on, competing political and historical discourses. The focus centers on the Sahrawi blog hosted by El País , analyzing its use of communal poetry, nostalgic discourse, and transnational appeal to communicate and support Sahrawi political and literary goals
Eghindi Among Sahrawi Refugees of Western Sahara
Get PDFEghindi is an illness built around a set of pathological states experienced by Sahrawi in the desert environment of Western Sahara. Its core symptoms are caused by osmotic imbalances related to salt consumption. In 1975, many Sahrawi were exiled into refugee camps, and they have since experienced radical socio cultural changes, which are reflected in changing explanatory models of eghindi. Older and conservative refugees, attached to traditional Sahrawi culture, have expanded its conceptualization to include new pathogenic factors, while younger and progressive refugees, acculturated with Western culture, began challenging its existence. Eghindi became embodied within a broader process of negotiation of Sahrawi cultural identity. Our findings provide a framework for thinking about the evolution of illness in response to displacement, and highlight that when explanatory models evolve, intra-cultural tensions can arise within a population
The Sahrawi Refugees and their National Identity : A qualitative study of how the Sahrawi refugees present their national identity in online blogs
No full textThe Sahrawi refugees have lived in refugee camps in Algeria since the invasion of Western Sahara in 1975. The flight to the refugee camps marked the start of their refugee existence, and has become a critical event in the history of the Sahrawis. The Sahrawi nation and national identity was created in the refugee camps, as a part of a national project. This thesis aims to explore the national identity of the Sahrawi refugees, as it is presented in blogs on the Internet.
The national identity of the Sahrawi refugees is an established and continuous identity, sustained by cultural foundations from the Sahrawi past. The importance and content of the national identity may be explained by looking at the nature of the refugee situation. Ideals of struggle and sacrifice in the past and the present have a strong position in the Sahrawi national identity, and are interpreted as a part of the Sahrawi destiny. The destiny of the Sahrawi refugees signifies future independence in the homeland Western Sahara
Between Borders and Bombs: The Existence and Resistance of the Sahrawi Territory through the Bodies of Sahrawi Women
Get PDFThis article analyses the Sahrawi territory and the resistance of its people based on a critical feminist geography approach. The main purpose of the research is to conceive the bodies of Sahrawi women which actively participate in the construction of their territory (not recognised after the invasion of Morocco and Mauritania in 1975) as territories in conflict and in constant risk, emphasising the power relationship between body and territory as spatial scales. The article uses dance as a tool for an ethnographic approach and explores the importance of "artivism" as a political act and as a methodology of action-participation in the Artifariti Festival. We participated in this festival as part of the Hanin Performing Dance Collective in order to understand and learn directly about the situation in which Sahrawi women live. Spaces for reflection and resistance arise and alternatives for and with the Sahrawi people are generated through art
Leaders in the desert: The Sahrawi women of Western Sahara
Get PDFThe Journal of Project Monma Research CentreThis report is based on research conducted in the Sahrawi refugee camps in southern Algeria in September of 2014. As two anthropologists we travelled to the refugee camps near Tindouf in southern Algeria to learn more about the leaders of the camps who we had heard were predominantly women. The Sahrawi became refugees after the Moroccans invaded Western Sahara after the Spanish withdrew as a colonial power in 1975 starting the Sahrawis long struggle for independence. Throughout our research in the camps women did not speak of violence or of rape. They did not complain of harassment or physical violence from their husbands. They instead spoke of the burning heat, the difficulties of not having enough water and their struggles for independence. The governing body of the Sahrawi, the Polisario Front was built with women’s equality being one of the strongest features of their social organization and that women’s equality was the dominant theme of life in the Sahrawi camps. Islam has also played a key role in the empowerment of women as the Sahrawi understand Islam as acknowledging men and women equally throughout the Koran and that Islam calls for the respect of women. Thus the example of the Sahrawi demonstrates that the equality amongst men is not only possible but that it is possible regardless of environment, culture or religion
The Western Sahara and the Search for the Roots of Sahrawi National Identity
No full textThis work is a socio-historical study of the roots of Sahrawi national identity. The Sahrawi are a community of people who live in the Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. Most of its territory has been occupied since 1975 by Morocco, which denies the existence of a distinctive population inhabiting the Western Sahara. In contrast, the POLISARIO Front, vanguard of the Sahrawi nationalist movement, argues that the Western Sahara belongs to the Sahrawi and seeks its full independence. It bases its claims on the notion of a distinctive history, language, and culture for the Sahrawi, separate from that of Moroccans.
The central question of this study asks, “What are the origins of Sahrawi national identity?” This study provides a detailed account of Sahrawi identity formation and how it has developed in intensity and scope. It renders a clear understanding of the Sahrawi phenomenon, useful to the international community in its deliberations on the validity of their nationalism. This study examines the foundation of Sahrawi identity through three different theoretical lenses, namely, primordialism, instrumentalism, and constructivism. The study analyzes arguments derived from each of these theoretical approaches, acknowledging the diversity of arguments about the sources of national identity. This study also demonstrates how a national identity can develop over a long period of time as a succession of layers. This study locates the final moment of Sahrawi identity formation in the twentieth century, but adds that this conclusion utilizes essential markers of differentiation that persist over time—the building blocks of any national identity
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