Photo Credit: Refugees International
10/27/2006

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Senegal deported large numbers of Arabs to Mauritania and Mauritania stripped citizenship from a large portion of its non-Arab population. As time went on, most of those forced out returned home spontaneously. Today, an estimated 19,000 people (claims range from 15,000 to 50,000) live dispersed in settlements across a 600-kilometer strip near the Mauritanian border. International refugee assistance ended in 1997 and no census has been taken in many years.