Tendrara is a town-region located in the easternmost part of Morocco and home to the Beni Guil tribe. The Beni Guil tribe is one of the largest Darija-speaking nomad communities in the country. In the 10th century, their ancestors were given the right to graze on the land of the Moroccan Oriental, where they have been pasturing since. Their territory used to cover around 25.000 sq.km in the North East of the country. For the past 40 years, desertification and the lack of water have led them to adopt a progressive sedentarization in towns and villages in the Figuig province, and mainly in Tendrara. Today, more than half of the Beni Guil have abandoned their transhumance lifestyle leading to dramatic changes in their tradition and way of life.

Tendrara is home to 6,000 inhabitants from Beni Guil who now live in concrete and brick housing. Around the town, there are hundreds of tents, home to other Beni Guil who were forced to settle but refuse to give up on their century-old shelter and lifestyle. The acceleration of desertification and droughts threatens to also force a small group of remaining Rouhal (nomads) in the province to settle. In summer, the average temperature is 44° C, and the closest water source can be as far as 40 kilometers away.

Members of the Beni Guil tribe describe the situation as “slow death”, leaving them with no other option than to leave their homes. The town is full of entire ghost streets with empty houses as for the past two decades, there has been an increasing migration flux from Tendrara to Oujda, consisting mostly of men. They are climate refugees. Based on the Groundswell report, by 2050 in Morocco, 1.5 to 1.9 million people will be pushed to migrate in a movement of internal mobility within the country, which represents 5.5% of the total population. The lengthening drought and expanding desert pose an increasing threat to vulnerable communities in the country.