Western Sahara News

Q&A: Confidence building programme helps Sahrawi families reconnect GENEVA, April 25 (UNHCR) - Since 2004, the UN refugee agency has been running a programme of Confidence Building Measures (CBM) aimed at establishing direct contact between separated families from the Western Sahara and at helping them reconnect. At the heart of the CBM programme are weekly flights that briefly reunite Sahrawi refugees living in windswept, arid isolated camps in western Algeria's Tindouf region and their relatives in the Western Sahara Territory. In what has become one of the world's most protracted refugee situations, the Sahrawi started arriving in western Algeria in 1976, soon after Spain withdrew from the Western Sahara and fighting broke out over its control. To ensure that more people can benefit from the reunion flights, UNHCR earlier this month began using a larger aircraft - a Boeing 737 - between Tindouf and cities in Western Sahara. Georges-Patrick Menze, acting head of the CBM ...

Tomorrow (17 April), Security Council members are set to receive a briefing in consultations on the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). The Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy, Christopher Ross, and the head of MINURSO, Hany Abdel-Aziz, are scheduled to brief on developments and on the latest report of the Secretary-General (S/2012/197). In the coming week or so, the Council is likely to adopt a resolution renewing MINURSO’s mandate for a further 12 months before it expires on 30 April. It appears that the Group of Friends of Western Sahara (France, Russia, US, UK and Spain) has already held discussions on a possible draft resolution. Following tomorrow’s consultations, all Council members will likely be involved in the process. Prior to the distribution of the Secretary-General’s final report last week, two earlier advance copies—both distributed on and dated 6 April—were subsequently replaced with a redacted advance report on 11 April. (It would appear that the...

The 36-year dispute between Saharan nationalists and Morocco over Morocco's occupation of the mineral-rich Western Sahara region is at a stalemate, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has told the Security Council, which on Tuesday will discuss the future of its peacekeeping mission there. The Moroccan government and Polisario Front rebels have held nine rounds of informal talks since 2007 that achieved nothing except agreement to hold more talks, the UN chief said in his report. Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since invading in 1976 and annexing the territory in 1979. Morocco has proposed wide-ranging autonomy for the region, but the pro-independence Polisario Front insists on the "inalienable right" of the people of the former Spanish colony to self-determination through a referendum on the territory's future. Morocco consolidated control of the region in the 1980s by building a 1,700-mile (2,735-kilometer) sand berm through the desert dividing it from neighboring ...

Links: Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg faces embarrassment after it was revealed his wife Miriam represents a company accused of trampling on human rights By SIMON WALTERS AND GLEN OWEN Nick Clegg faces embarrassment after it was disclosed that his wife represents a firm that has been accused of trampling on the human rights of ‘Africa’s last colony’. A ‘substantial’ part of lawyer Miriam Clegg’s work, for which she is paid up to £500,000 a year, is understood to come from Moroccan mining giant OCP. The company is at the centre of international controversy over the treatment of the Sahrawi nomadic tribesmen of the Sahara. Morocco, which runs the mining firm, annexed Western Sahara, where the tribesmen live, in 1975, enabling it to seize the world’s biggest phosphate reserves worth billions of pounds. It embarked on a ruthless campaign of forced removals of Sahrawis to refugee camps and Moroccans were brought in to run the mines. The United Nations ...

The Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony in Africa, was progressively abandoned by Spain from 1975 onwards. In view of the situation, the International Court of Justice pronounced the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination. However, on November 6 of that same year, King Hassan II, taking advantage of the political crisis rife throughout Franco’s regime in Spain, ordered the “Green March”, whereby 350,000 civilian settlers and 25,000 soldiers of Moroccan origin occupied the region. He therefore sought support and legitimisation for annexation of the area to the Kingdom of Morocco, meanwhile preventing a referendum being held to legitimise the independence of Western Sahara, in view of the more than foreseeable result. The operation was “sold” to European public opinion as a “peaceful invasion by the local population”, despite the fact that the civilian occupation was accompanied by military invasion of the region and that the humble Moroccan settlers, substantially differ...

ELDH has written its letter with regard to the mandate of MINURSO as defined in the UN Security Council resolution 1979 (2011) and the mandate´s review in April 2012. ELDH is deeply concerned about the human rights situation in the Moroccan occupied territories of Western Sahara. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly reported serious human rights violations committed by Morocco . Even the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has called for closer monitoring of the human rights situation and human rights protection is increasingly being considered as part of the program of UN operations . In spite of these observations the UN Security Council up to now has refused to extend the mandate of MINURSO to the monitoring of human rights violations. The full text of the letter (pdf-datafile)

The UN Secretary General has accused Morocco of spying on the world body’s monitors and restricting the UN mission’s peacekeeping efforts in the disputed region of Western Sahara.  UN peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, MINURSO, is "unable to exercise fully its peacekeeping monitoring, observation and reporting functions, or avail of the authority to reverse the erosion" of its ability to function, Reuters quoted Ban Ki-moon as saying on Thursday.  Ban’s report comes as the last round of UN-brokered negotiations between Morocco, the Polisario Front independence movement, Algeria and Mauritania on the fate of Western Sahara led to no results last month.  "There were ... indications that the confidentiality of communications between MINURSO headquarters and New York was, at least on occasion, compromised," the report said.  Ban called on the Security Council to assist him "in reasserting the mandated role of MINURSO, upholding peacekeeping standards and (...

This is the final copy of the UN Secretary-General's report on the situation concerning Western Sahara for the information of the members of the Security Council. The members of the Security Council received an advance copy of this report on April 6. Diplomats said that this final report came out with major amendments in paragraphs 22, 46, 72, 94, 112 and 114.   (Find here the FIRST advance copy ).  Report of the Secretary-General on the situation concerning Western Sahara I. Introduction 1. The present report is submitted pursuant to Security Council resolution 1979 (2011) of 27 April 2011, by which the Council extended the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) until 30 April 2012, and requested a report on the situation in Western Sahara before the end of the mandate period. The present report covers developments since the issuance of my report dated 1 April 2011 (S/2011/249), and describes the situation on the ground, the s...