TINDOUF, Algeria — The international community is pushing for an independent census to determine the number of Sahrawi refugees living in Algeria, but the effort is meeting considerable resistance.
Estimates of the number of Sahrawis — the indigenous people of the Moroccan-occupied territories in disputed Western Sahara — living in Algerian camps vary greatly. The Sahrawi political-military movement Polisario Front places the figure at 160,000. Morocco, which controls most of the disputed territory in which the refugees once lived, says Algeria is sheltering at most 50,000 refugees.
