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Trips offer respite to Sahrawi refugee children

Sahrawi children live in difficult conditions year-round, with the exception of those children lucky enough to take "peace vacations" in Spain.
Indigenous Sahrawi girls play on an improvised see-saw at a refugee camp of Boudjdour in Tindouf, southern Algeria March 3, 2016. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to visit the Sahrawi refugees in south-west Algeria's Tindouf region. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra      TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY      - RTS96QU

TINDOUF, Algeria — Born in a desert historically known as the devil’s garden, Sahrawi refugee children have little to enjoy in their camps. But thanks to a summer program called Vacations in Peace, the children can experience a very different world.

Since the mid-1980s, generations of Sahrawi children who grew up in refugee camps have benefited from the peace vacations in Spain. The annual summer program, sponsored by the group Friends of the Sahrawi People, has been providing a place where exiled Sahrawi children can live, temporarily, a normal childhood.

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