Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what independent assessment has been made of the number of refugees living in the Tindouf camps; and what the most recent estimate of that number is.

We have no access to independent figures on the number of refugees living in the Tindouf camps. The UK supports the language in the UN Secretary General’s latest report on the situation in Western Sahara (S/2014/258), which cites a figure of 90,000 refugees.