•Midwives and traditional midwives coexist in Sahrawi refugee camps.•The only refugee camp in the world where midwives can be trained are Sahrawi refugee camps.•Midwives work in spite of precarious resources that depend essentially on foreingn aid.•Midwives are committed to improviding maternal and child health in the Sahrawi population. The historical backdrop of Western Sahara has meant that, for the last 43 years, part of its indigenous population has survived in refugee camps located in the Algerian desert. International aid from abroad has become the main source of sustenance for all people living in this hostile environment. Since the beginning of this type of settlement, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has been concerned with creating the necessary infrastructures to meet the health needs of the people living in these conditions. As a result, the Ahmed Abdel-Fatah School of Nursing was created in the Sahrawi refugee camps, which began to train midwives to care for women during the stages of pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum in 2002. The aim of this paper is to provide an approach to the origin and evolution of midwifery education for the Sahrawi refugee camps, in the only school of nursing that exists worldwide in a refugee camp.