Return, resettle or integrate: Morocco presses UN to fund three options for Tindouf residents

The UN refugee agency has mobilized about $90 million for Algeria’s Tindouf camps since 2021, yet residents have become less economically independent and malnutrition has doubled, Morocco’s ambassador Omar Zniber said Wednesday in Geneva.

His argument: the agency’s budget needs to give people a credible prospect of leaving prolonged displacement behind.

Addressing UNHCR’s Standing Committee, Zniber urged the agency to fund three options: voluntary return, resettlement in a willing third country or integration in Algeria. Each, he stressed, should depend on the individual’s free choice.

“Spending has increased while hope has declined,” he said, describing existing funding arrangements as a costly system for preserving the status quo.

The criticism concerned what successive rounds of assistance were accomplishing, with Zniber adding that employment remained inaccessible and economic independence had eroded, arguing that the money allocated was sustaining a prolonged situation without adequately meeting residents’ needs.

His proposed change would put what refugee agencies call “durable solutions” into budget planning.

Zniber said Morocco was prepared to shoulder its responsibility and described King Mohammed VI’s appeal for residents to return with dignity as a commitment to receive them “without conditions and on a strictly individual and voluntary basis.”

He also affirmed support for the other two options, including integration in Algeria, saying the choice belonged to each person.

Linking the proposal to diplomacy over the Sahara, Zniber cited Security Council Resolution 2797 as backing Morocco’s autonomy initiative and opening a political prospect beyond the longstanding impasse. He presented that development as giving Morocco’s commitment to receive returnees renewed significance.

The ambassador said several major donors were willing to finance arrangements leading to a solution rather than perpetuating the existing situation. He urged UNHCR to explore all three options with the countries concerned and willing partners before its Executive Committee session.

That request would make the next stage a discussion about implementation: which countries would participate, which options residents would choose and how funding would support those choices. Zniber did not identify the donors or prospective resettlement countries in the remarks provided.

He closed by connecting the ambition to halve protracted displacement situations by 2035 with the agency’s spending decisions. Achieving that goal, he argued, would depend on how it allocated each dollar, making durable solutions a budget priority from the outset.