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A safe place to dream
This year’s World Refugee Day theme centred on the fundamentals of international refugee protection with the slogan: Everyone has the right to seek safety.
World Refugee Day, celebrated each year on 20 June, is a chance to recognize and honour the courage, talents, and aspirations of forcibly displaced people worldwide. In 2022, the total global population of forcibly displaced people, which includes refugees and people displaced inside their own countries, reached an astounding 100 million. Mauritania’s refugee population is also rising, including in the Mbera camp in the southeastern Hodh Chargui region, which today hosts 79,610 Malian refugees. With persistent instability in parts of the Sahel, the number of refugees seeking safety in Mauritania’s major cities is also growing.
As such, UNHCR and partners organized World Refugee Day events around the country, and not only on 20 June but throughout the month. These events were conceptualized and planned together with the refugees, host communities, civil society, UN and NGO partners and government officials. Our aim was to bring refugees together with host communities, and to spotlight the valuable contribution refugees make to the social fabric of Mauritania today.
Football matches brought refugee students face to face with Mauritania’s national football league and United Nations Volunteers. In Nouadhibou, more than 2,000 people gathered for a live concert with the well-known artist Le Baron. In Nouakchott, refugee children explored the world of art at the Gallery D’art, where visitors could also enjoy Malika Diagana’s photo exhibit of refugee women leaders in Mbera camp. An official ceremony was organized in Bassikounou and in Mbera camp with refugees and host communities, and included the awarding of prizes to refugee pupils who also displayed their artwork, put on a play, and celebrated with traditional dance and music.
For more information about the events, please consult UNHCR Mauritania’s Facebook page.