Mauritania — humanitarian situation

Mauritania hosts the largest Malian refugee population in West Africa, with protection extended to almost 309,000 refugees as of August 2026 WFP. Between October 2025 and May 2026, Hodh Chargui province received 14,402 new arrivals, of whom 68 percent are children and 20 percent are women WFP. The continued influx from Mali has placed increasing humanitarian demands on response capacity in the border region, where operations are adapting to address escalating needs among both refugee and host communities. Food security across the Sahel, including Mauritania, faces mounting pressure from climate-induced shocks. The intensifying El Niño phenomenon, already the strongest on record for this time of year, is expected to significantly worsen food insecurity through 2027 in vulnerable countries WFP. Above-normal rainfall is forecast for northern Africa beginning in September 2026, though recent weeks have seen uneven precipitation patterns across the broader Sahel FAO. Since 2018, the WFP-led Sahel Integrated Resilience Initiative has worked to restore degraded land and strengthen food security across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, improving livelihoods and food production for more than four million people WFP. This multi-country effort recently received recognition as a United Nations World Restoration Flagship for its large-scale land restoration work. Regional humanitarian access constraints continue to affect operations across West and Central Africa. As of August 2026, five humanitarian workers have been killed, nine injured, and 14 kidnapped region-wide, with national staff accounting for the majority of casualties OCHA. The agency has called for urgent action to protect civilians and humanitarian personnel amid escalating violence, shrinking access, and increasingly deadly warfare methods across the region. These protection challenges compound operational difficulties in reaching affected populations. Desert locust populations have shown mixed activity in the region. In Mauritania, increasing numbers of solitarious adults were observed in August, while localized breeding was detected in southwest Libya with scattered hoppers and adults present FAO. Monitoring continues across traditional breeding areas as seasonal conditions evolve.