What is a refugee?

We have now spent five weeks in the camp and all three of us now better grasp the meaning of the ‘very cold nights’. The houses and tents are obviously not insulated and thus the temperature is the same inside and outside- around 10 degrees at night. We are very thankful for our woollen jumper and the warm sleeping bags we brought from Norway however the sleeping bag has also created a source of discussion in my family. In a good way that is.

One especially cold night when I decided to crawl up in my sleeping bag, my host-sisters started questioning the bag in itself. Why did I bring it when sleeping bags are ‘only’ used for mountaineering and remote cabin trips?  I tried to explain in a mix of Hassaneya, Arabic, Spanish, English and body language that I prepared for a refugee camp, not the castle I live in. I my mind I packed for ‘a worst-case-scenario’, a cold place where blankets would be a luxury, where toilets would be located behind sand dunes, where good food would be a treat and soap only placed the big supermarket in Algeria- 300 kilometres away.

As you probably have understood, my family enjoys a big house with washing facilities, a large kitchen and enough batteries to light up the house at night. The standard of living varies from family to family, and as my host-sister neatly put it when I asked what the next volunteers should bring: ‘if you live with a good family, you don’t need anything’. Our little discussion, which ended up with two giggling Saharawi girls and a very confused Norwegian made me start thinking. What is really a refugee?

News reports from Somalia and aid commercials with starving children with big eyes have contributed to my perhaps very ‘Westernised’ image of a refugee camp. However, to my experience, being a refugee doesn’t necessarily equal dirt and poverty. India has for many years hosted refugees from Tibet, and despite the fact many of them have settled in their new home country, they still hold a refugee status. Consequently, the debate of removing someone’s refugee titles emerges. When do we stop calling a people or individuals a refugee? Does it depend on time, wealth or the political situation? And perhaps more importantly, who has the right to give and to remove such titles? Now, it is important to notice that I am not referring to the situation in the Sahara Desert and I do not imply anywhere that the humanitarian aid to the camps has to be stopped. It is rather a mix of thoughts which have come to my mind after spending time with my family and students.

I personally find the refugee debate difficult to address and even more so after having developed close connections with my host-family and friends.  If we are to give titles and thus rights to a certain people, do we then classify them? Do we have ‘super-refugees’ on the Horn of Africa and lower class refugees from conflicts more than 40 years old? Or are all refugees entitled to the same rights and aid, no matter their economic income or time constraints?

I am not convinced that these questions can ever be answered. In the Saharawi case, the people will never stop calling themselves refugees until they have moved back to their country of Western Sahara, free from Morocco’s occupation and human rights abuses. Until then, the Sahara desert will always be scattered with tents and sand houses, filled with tolerant Saharawis, patiently waiting for their day of freedom. And they will continue to encounter odd Norwegian habits and their sleeping bags.