Sudanese refugees pile up in Morocco, UNHCR runs asylum processing while the state limits work and services, border policing turns protection into a moving queue

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Sudanese refugee Amir Ali in Rabat, Morocco [Caolán Magee/Al Jazeera]Sudanese refugee Amir Ali in Rabat, Morocco [Caolan Magee/Al Jazeera] aljazeera.com

aljazeera.com

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] aljazeera.com

Sudanese teenager Amir Ali spent two days hiding in the hills between Maghnia in Algeria and Oujda in Morocco, watching patrols sweep the border with flashlights and dogs. When he tried to cross, he says Algerian guards beat him, took his phone and documents, jailed him, then bused him south toward the Sahara. He tried again anyway, telling Al Jazeera he had “nowhere else to go”.

The story is being repeated along Morocco’s eastern frontier as Sudan’s war enters its fourth year and the flight paths harden into a market. According to Al Jazeera, many Sudanese escape through Libya—where smugglers and traffickers control routes—then cross Algeria before attempting to reach Morocco, which is seen as a place where refugee status can be claimed without risking the Mediterranean. Morocco is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, but a long-promised national asylum law has still not been implemented; in practice, the UN refugee agency registers asylum seekers and determines status under its mandate.

That division of labour creates a predictable bottleneck. Recognition depends on UNHCR processing capacity, while day-to-day survival depends on a state that, by Al Jazeera’s account, offers little accommodation and limited access to secondary healthcare. Formal work is largely out of reach: fewer than 0.5% of registered refugees and asylum seekers have been able to access formal employment, the report says. The result is a population that is documented enough to be counted, but not integrated enough to be self-supporting.

Morocco’s own incentives run in the opposite direction. The country’s leverage with European governments rests heavily on migration control, and the easiest way to signal control is to keep would‑be onward travellers away from the northern corridor. Aid groups and the UN told Al Jazeera that Moroccan authorities have pushed refugees toward the south of the country, away from Europe, while neighbouring states continue to push people back across borders. Each step turns asylum into a moving target: the person who makes it across one line is immediately repositioned toward another.

The numbers show why the system is straining. UNHCR registered 22,370 refugees and asylum seekers in Morocco by the end of 2025, up from about 18,900 a year earlier, from 67 countries. Sudanese accounted for the largest share of new arrivals, with 5,290 registered as of December 2025, according to Al Jazeera. A war that donors discuss in conferences is producing a steady flow of people who must navigate border police, smugglers and paperwork—often without documents, money, or medical care.

Ali’s heart condition, untreated along the route, turned a border chase into a collapse in the dark. He was then driven away from the frontier on a bus heading south, with the border still visible from the hills he left behind.