Sudanese refugee Amir Ali in Rabat, Morocco [Caolán Magee/Al Jazeera]Sudanese refugee Amir Ali in Rabat, Morocco [Caolan Magee/Al Jazeera]By Caolán MageePublished On 18 Apr 202618 Apr 2026 xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo
Rabat, Morocco - Amir Ali stood on a narrow strip of land between two countries.
Ahead, Moroccan guards moved through the darkness with flashlights and dogs. Behind him, Algerian security forces waited.
For two days, he stayed hidden in the hills between the Algerian town of Maghnia and Morocco's Oujda, watching the patrols below.
Ali had been travelling for more than a year. He had fled a war in Sudan that killed his family, been detained and beaten by the country's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), extorted by police and trafficked to a farm in Libya, where captors demanded money and tortured those who could not pay. He had crossed deserts and borders, slept rough and gone hungry. Now Morocco, the last stop on his journey, was close enough to see.
At about 10pm, Ali set off with two other men, moving slowly through the hills, sometimes on his knees, sometimes crawling.
The 17-year-old Sudanese refugee could see the border ahead. But before they reached it, a vehicle pulled up nearby. He and the others pressed themselves into the darkness. Like many times before, they tried to disappear.
As the guards closed in, his heart began pounding violently in his chest – a symptom of an untreated heart valve condition.
“My heart started beating so hard,” he said. “It started hurting so much that I just fell down.”
He says an Algerian guard slapped and beat him before loading him into a vehicle. “They hit me ... They took everything that we had ... phones, clothes, documents."
After two days in prison, he was put on a bus and driven south, back towards the edge of the Sahara, away from what he thought would be a place of refuge.
But he would try this journey again. “I had nowhere else to go,” he said.
People walk at a central market in Rabat, Morocco, Monday, January 12, 2026 [Themba Hadebe/AP Photo]People walk at a central market in Rabat, Morocco, Monday, January 12, 2026 [Themba Hadebe/AP Photo]Sudanese refugees have begun appearing along Morocco’s eastern frontier in growing numbers since war erupted in Sudan in April 2023.
Escaping the fighting in Sudan, they often cross into Libya through areas controlled by smugglers and traffickers, then push on through Algeria before attempting the final crossing into Morocco, often believing it will be the first place on the route where they can formally claim refugee status.
For many, Morocco appears a safer alternative than crossing the Mediterranean. It is widely regarded by analysts as one of the safer countries in the region for refugees, and it is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. But a long-promised asylum law has yet to be implemented, according to the UNHCR. In practice, much of the process is carried out by the UN refugee agency itself, which registers asylum seekers and determines refugee status under its international mandate.
Moroccan authorities can issue national refugee cards and residence permits through the Ministry of Interior, but support from the state remains limited. Refugees are not provided with accommodation or access to secondary healthcare, and fewer than 0.5 percent of registered refugees and asylum seekers have been able to access formal employment.
By the end of 2025, UNHCR had registered 22,370 refugees and asylum seekers in Morocco from 67 different countries, up from about 18,900 the previous year. Sudanese nationals accounted for the largest share of new arrivals, with 5,290 registered as of December 2025. At the same time, refugees, aid groups, and the UN say Moroccan authorities continue to push refugees to the south of the country, further away from Europe, while other nations in North Africa are continuing to push refugees back over borders, according to aid groups, refugees, and the UNHCR.
The result is a growing number of Sudanese refugees making a treacherous journey across the continent, with many ending up trafficked, detained, beaten, pushed back or stranded along the way as vital humanitarian services are stripped back. But even when they reach Morocco, many say they still do not feel safe. They are left trapped in legal and financial limbo: unable to move on to Europe, and never fully secure from being forced south towards the border they risked everything to cross.
“This is the most hurt community we have ever seen,” said Yasmina Filali, the president and founder of Fondation Orient-Occident, a Rabat-based organisation that supports refugees and asylum seekers. “It’s painful and tragic ... this community is really, really in a bad shape.
Sudan's paramilitary RSF eventually took control of el-Fasher in October 2025 [File: AFP]Sudan's paramilitary RSF eventually took control of el-Fasher in October 2025 [File: AFP]For Ali, the Sudanese refugee, the search for safety began more than a year earlier in el-Fasher, in western Sudan's Darfur region.
War broke out on April 15, 2023, after a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF. Fighting began in the capital, Khartoum, before spreading across the country.
Within months, the war arrived in el-Fasher, just as Ali was in hospital for an appointment.
They just started shooting missiles,” he said. By the time he got home, he found it a burning ember.
No one had survived. His parents, six of his brothers and his sister were killed.
“I was so heartbroken,” he said. Everything he had once known had ended.
Ali fled, but was stopped by RSF fighters, lined up and questioned. The RSF are notorious for human rights abuses, and often specifically target non-Arab Sudanese.
“They ask you your tribe, where you are from,” he said. “They separate you.”
He was taken aside and beaten, and had a gun pointed at his head.
Ali was released only after paying. He travelled on to South Sudan and Uganda, but found little for himself in both countries. With no work available, people told him to keep moving - towards Libya, Morocco or Europe.
Migrants and refugees often take desert routes to reach Libya [File: Giacomo Zandonini/Al Jazeera]Migrants and refugees often take desert routes to reach Libya [File: Giacomo Zandonini/Al Jazeera]Ali moved on quickly, heading towards Sudan's remote desert border with Libya.
He paid for passage into Libya at night in the back of a pick-up truck with 16 others, driving through the desert.
But they were intercepted by a group of armed men, kidnapped, and forced to call family members and ask for money. Those who could not pay were beaten.
“They hit you with anything they have,” he said. But Ali, with no family left, had nobody to call. Still, he was tortured and became severely weak, and was eventually released once the gang saw they couldn't make money from him.
Crossing the Mediterranean was too expensive. Morocco, he had heard, offered another option.
But to get there, he had to cross through Algeria, where he was imprisoned for attempting the crossing into Morocco - and was taken on a bus to be deported to Niger. On the second night, Ali jumped out of the window of the bus and ran into the dark, hid, and waited.
Two weeks later, after travelling on foot, he found himself back on the Algeria-Morocco border for a second time. “After 12 hours, we actually made it inside, and we were successful, with no guards and no dogs ... we had to walk for seven hours. We were at the top of the mountains; we had to go down.”
This time, when he crossed, he reached Oujda, in eastern Morocco.
A local charity gave him shelter for three days. He went to hospital to seek treatment for his heart condition, but was told he needed a specialist. “Bad things have happened to my heart since I left Sudan,” he said.
Ali registered with the UN refugee agency. For the first time since leaving Sudan, he had documentation recognising him as an asylum seeker.
People are reflected in a water fountain outside the old walls of the Medina of Rabat, Morocco [File: Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP Photo]People are reflected in a water fountain outside the old walls of the Medina of Rabat, Morocco [File: Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP Photo]In the suburbs of Rabat, behind a high wall and a metal gate, lies Fondation Orient-Occident.
The centre began as a community space, but as migration increased, it now functions as something closer to a place of refuge for those fleeing war and migrants from Western Africa. There, people can access legal advice, the internet, and attend workshops.
There is a courtyard where people gather between appointments, drinking coffee. Outside the gates, families sit on the grass with their children.
“In the last three years, we started receiving people from Sudan in big numbers,” said Hind Benminoum, a psychologist who works with refugees at the centre.
“We do listening sessions and group therapy,” she said. “They are in a very bad way. Sometimes, we have to refer them to hospital.”
She said many arrive with severe physical injuries. “Some have broken legs, injured hands. Some have lost their eyes,” she said.
She paused when asked about what people had endured on the journey. “I can’t even talk about it,” she said. “I’m reminded of their stories. It’s very bad. They’ve passed through unimaginable situations: rape, torture, slavery. They are treated like animals because they are deprived of their liberty.”
In Rabat, Ali now spends his days at the centre, where his journey has slowed into a different kind of uncertainty.
He sits in the winter sun in a light jacket and sandals, speaking quietly. At times, his voice steadies. At others, it trembles. Aid workers, the UNHCR and refugees all told Al Jazeera that police pushbacks over borders are still occurring along Ali’s route to Africa.
He arrived on January 1 and is now registered with the UN refugee agency, which referred him to Fondation Orient-Occident and placed him in a protection house for minors. Even with this support and his refugee papers, Ali feels neither settled nor secure.
A man walks through a passage in Rabat, Morocco [Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP Photo]A man walks through a passage in Rabat, Morocco [Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP Photo]Morocco adopted a National Strategy on Immigration and Asylum in 2013 and outlined plans for a formal asylum law. More than a decade later, that law has still not been implemented.
“In practice, UNHCR registers asylum seekers and conducts refugee status determination in application of its mandate stated in the 1951 Refugee Convention and its Statute,” Muriel Juramie, UNHCR’s interim representative in Morocco, told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera contacted the Moroccan government for comment but did not get a response.
Recognised refugees can then obtain documentation and apply for residence permits.
Juramie said UNHCR has called for “the adoption of a comprehensive national asylum law in Morocco”, arguing it would bring “clarity, predictability, and consistency” to procedures, establish appeal mechanisms and formally codify the rights of recognised refugees.
Without it, organisations working with refugees say protection rests on an improvised system rather than a coherent legal framework.
“This is an unusual situation globally: a sovereign state effectively delegating a core protection function to an international agency, not by explicit legal design, but by default,” said Rachid Chakri of Fondation Orient-Occident.
“Refugees arriving in Morocco today face a system that is not designed to protect them over the medium or long term,” he said. “Many will spend years in legal precarity – registered but undocumented, present but unintegrated, visible to the state primarily as a migration management challenge rather than as rights-holders.”
For those who reach Morocco, there is no state-run refugee accommodation system. Aid groups fill part of the void, but only for the most vulnerable and only when resources allow. Some asylum seekers sleep rough or under bridges. Others rely on overstretched charities for temporary shelter, food or legal support.
On paper, recognised refugees have the right to work. In reality, however, access to work remains limited. Administrative barriers, recognition of qualifications and labour market conditions all restrict opportunities, while obtaining a residence permit can take time, the UNHCR said.
According to UNHCR, just 80 refugees – including 14 women – had accessed formal jobs, along with eight internships, out of more than 22,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers.
Without accommodation, money, or qualifications, refugees struggle to gain employment.
Before the war, Ali was in school and hoped to go to university. In Rabat, that future feels remote. He has completed a short course in elderly care and now works as an unpaid intern, but says his heart condition often makes even that difficult.
He could try to reach Europe via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta or Melilla in North Africa, but says his health makes that impossible, while crossing the Mediterranean is too dangerous, and too expensive.
Meanwhile, resettlement, which UNHCR grants in some instances based on vulnerability and available quotas, and is often spoken of by refugees as the only real way out, feels distant.
In 2025, Juramie said, “a hundred” had been submitted to resettlement countries, mainly in North America and Europe, which are growing increasingly resistant to allowing refugees in.
So Ali waits, for a decision that may never come, and with the constant fear of being picked up by police and sent south.
Migrants and refugees fear being pushed back into the Moroccan desert [File: Giovanna Dell Orto/AP Photo]Migrants and refugees fear being pushed back into the Moroccan desert [File: Giovanna Dell Orto/AP Photo]Meanwhile, reports of police pushbacks – the forced return of migrants or refugees across borders – to the Algerian border and relocations to southern Morocco are “deeply concerning”, and they are “consistent with what organisations working on the ground have documented over several years”, Rachid Chakri, a member of Fondation Orient-Occident, said.
Ali says he knows people who were registered with UNHCR and still ended up being moved by the authorities. He has heard of people picked up in cities and transported south, away from the coast. Others, he says, were taken back towards the Algerian border.
UNHCR said its certificates and refugee cards should protect holders from removal and are, in the vast majority of cases, recognised by the authorities. Where individual reports suggest otherwise, the agency says it intervenes directly.
Still, for refugees, the existence of formal rights does not always settle the question of what happens in practice.
Aurelia Donnard of Mixed Migration Info told Al Jazeera that even travelling to appointments or official offices could carry risks if people were stopped on the way.
Even the protections that do exist have become harder to reach. Juramie said 2025 had been marked by a major humanitarian funding crisis, forcing UNHCR to reduce its operations and staff in Morocco, as elsewhere.
“Reduced capacity affects the speed of registration, access to cash assistance, psychosocial and medical support, support to unaccompanied children and the ability to conduct protection monitoring in areas where refugees are present,” she said. “This affects all the refugees in the country, and more specifically those who recently arrived, such as the Sudanese.”
That matters for people like Ali because the longer someone remains half-documented, or waits for a procedure to move forward, the more exposed they are to arrest or removal.
That is increasingly shaped by European migration policy. Human Rights Watch says European governments, alongside Spain, have spent years deepening partnerships with countries of origin and transit to prevent people from reaching Europe.
Despite the constant fear of pushbacks, Ali says he has more pressing, immediate concerns.
Doctors in Rabat have told him he needs surgery. Under Morocco’s migration strategy, refugees can access healthcare, but in truth, only primary care is free.
Without money, specialist care remains out of reach. Resettlement to another country, he believes, may be his only realistic chance of treatment.
“My health is going from bad to worse,” he said. “Sometimes, I can’t breathe well. Sometimes, my heart starts beating very fast, and there is pain. It just becomes normal.”
He paused. “Bad things have happened to my heart since I left Sudan.”
