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Many days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his home since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator vigorous, and permits him to assess the condition of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg separatists fought with the army in his native Timbuktu area.

After four years as a refugee, he went back and worked for a year as a community worker before becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg unrest once again compelled him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the young people of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [and] that is painful because a refugee always has two hearts: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he longs to revisit one day.”

Originally planned as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In also, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government officials say the area is the third largest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, escaping a militant uprising that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country ungovernable. Aid workers – particularly at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have drastically cut funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] assist almost 90,000 people with both nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue vital nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the characteristics of a long-term settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children signed up in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, security patrols protect the camp from the threat of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have assumed new roles with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and run an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those injured by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also spreading awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s needs are clear.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough funding or materials,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we reuse what little we have, but it is not enough for the demands of the camp.”

In the schools, the children are given one meal daily by WFP. At one school with 100 children per class, six or seven of them sit by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still providing school meals, basic food distributions, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re concentrating on the most at-risk while working continuously to acquire new funding through the expansion of our donor base.”

The meals are powered by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only items in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch business programmes to help refugees grow crops and rear animals so they can make money and enhance their standard of living.

Though Malha oversees everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ support the most needy households, his heart longs to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you sacrifice everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you depend only on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is enough, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you suffer.

“We thank the Mauritanian authorities and the humanitarian organisations for what they have done for us but it is not the same as being in your own country, working with your own hands and living with dignity.”