For decades, Mauritania has maintained a generous open door policy towards Malians fleeing conflict. The most recent large-scale influx of Malians occurred in 2012, and resulted in the creation of the Mbera camp, which today hosts around 75,000 refugees. Because the large-scale return of Malians is not yet a viable option, Mauritania has committed itself to a policy of inclusion. It thus requested support from the UNHCR-WFP Targeting Hub to facilitate the inclusion of Malian refugees in the national social registry. Accordingly, the two UN agencies assisted Mauritania’s National Social Registry to conduct a socio-economic census to identify the most vulnerable households to target for prioritized assistance. Around 14,000 households were interviewed.
The purpose of the census was to:
- Collect socio-economic information on all refugees in Bassikounou to understand needs at household level
- Categorize refugee households based on their degree of vulnerability to inform programmatic decisions and joint targeting approaches
- Include all refugees in the national Social Registry
- Identify and include the most vulnerable refugees in the national social protection scheme, Tekavoul