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A number of mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp leader mentally and physically fit, and permits him to monitor the welfare of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg insurgents fought with the army in his home Timbuktu area.

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

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels especially sad for the younger inhabitants of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the kids who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their nation [and] that is difficult because a refugee always has dual loyalties: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he dreams of returning to one day.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand huts, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In addition, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.

Government authorities say the area is the number three human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, escaping a extremist rebellion that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country lawless. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now ceased USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue vital nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to funding cuts,” 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 outlets, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children signed up in school. New comers are registered by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

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

Some residents have assumed new roles with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and operate an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those wounded by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also raising awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s needs are obvious.

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

In the schools, the children are provided 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 almost plain, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still providing school meals, staple provisions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most at-risk while working relentlessly to acquire new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are funded by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only goods in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees cultivate and keep animals so they can make money and boost their standard of living.

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

“When you leave your country, you lose everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you are entirely reliant on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is sufficient, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“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.”