Senegalese families remain in limbo in a site called Khar Yalla, a decade after coastal floods destroyed their homes, Human Rights Watch said today. Despite recent progress, the government has not yet provided displaced families with a permanent, durable solution.

The approximately 1,000 people who lost their homes to tidal surges in 2015 and 2016 lived in historic fishing communities on the Langue de Barbarie peninsula of the northern city of Saint-Louis. After the families lived in tents for months, local authorities moved them to Khar Yalla in late 2016, providing them with temporary occupation permits pending a permanent solution. Local and national authorities noted that because the site floods and lacks essential services, it is not fit for permanent habitation. Yet, nearly 10 years on and with the next flood season coming in September, the families have not been provided with an alternative and continue to face violations of their right to permanent, adequate housing. 

“A decade of living in uncertainty is an unacceptable reality for families already traumatized by climate displacement,” said Erica Bower, climate displacement researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Senegalese government should provide families with the bare minimum for Khar Yalla to feel like home again: permanent permits to regularize their tenure.”

During a March 24-26, 2026 visit, Human Rights Watch found that some progress has been made since the publication of its August 2025 report about the situation. Around a dozen out of 68 households now have electricity, though the installation costs are prohibitive for many. Local and regional authorities are investigating the situation and have visited the Khar Yalla families for the first time in years.  

While these developments are encouraging, the Senegalese government should remedy the situation by providing families in Khar Yalla with permanent permits, paving a path towards a truly durable solution. Permanent permits would allow families to expand their overcrowded homes, complete their women’s center, build a wall to prevent floods, and pursue more dignified futures. 

Khar Yalla families are not alone. Hundreds of other families have been internally displaced across Senegal by coastal tidal surges. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, over 57,000 people were displaced by floods in Senegal in 2024 alone. As climate change accelerates, the number of people who are displaced by disasters and require a durable solution is likely to increase. 

Senegal has already invested more than many countries to support climate-displaced communities, but the authorities left the families in Khar Yalla out of those efforts. Khar Yalla’s experiences offer lessons about the process of planned relocation that should be considered in subsequent efforts. Such lessons include conducting a comprehensive census to identify those displaced the longest, selecting sites that are not flood prone, and providing families with permanent rather than temporary permits. 

Ad hoc, temporary, and reactive measures should not become the norm. To prevent poorly planned relocations from becoming protracted displacement, Senegal should plan ahead. This means systematically documenting lessons from existing cases and adopting legal frameworks to ensure that planned relocations are rights-respecting. 

Planned relocation for people displaced by climate change comes with serious risks and should be a last resort, while priority should be given to adaptation solutions that enable them to stay in their communities. Planning should respect human rights principles such as informed consent, meaningful participation, and nondiscrimination. A national policy framework on planned relocation should provide guidance on how to carry out these principles in practice, take comprehensive censuses of displaced peoples, and create criteria to ensure the sites selected fulfill beneficiaries’ rights.

Some governments, such as the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, have developed such standalone policies, and others such as Panama are in the process of developing national protocols. No country in Africa has yet taken this step. Senegal is uniquely positioned to set the standard for rights-respecting adaptation across Africa, Human Rights Watch said.

Given the recent announcement that the government is holding consultations about a possible climate change law, Senegal has an opportunity to create the legal foundation for a national decree on climate displacement and planned relocation. “Members of displaced communities like Khar Yalla should have a seat at the table as any laws and policies about their lived experiences are developed,” said Fatoumata Kine Mbodji from Lumière Synergie pour le Développement, a nongovernmental organization that works closely with fishing families in Saint-Louis.

The Senegalese government is obligated under national, regional, and international law to respect and fulfill people’s economic, social, and cultural rights and to protect them from reasonably foreseeable risks to their rights, including climate change impacts such as sea-level rise. Climate adaptation should be carried out in a manner that does not violate their rights. 

“The protracted crisis in Khar Yalla demonstrates that without a national policy, ad hoc relocations perpetuate precarity rather than provide durable solutions,” Bower said. “But with political will, Senegal can become a regional and global leader on this critical climate justice issue.”