Western Sahara News

TheSecurity Council , Recalling  and  reaffirming  all its previous resolutions on WesternSahara, Reaffirming its strong support for the efforts of the Secretary-General and hisPersonal Envoy to implement resolutions 1754 (2007), 1783 (2007),1813 (2008), 1871 (2009), 1920 (2010), 1979 (2011), 2044 (2012), and2099 (2013), Reaffirming  its commitment to assist the parties to achieve a just, lasting, andmutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for theself-determination of the people of Western Sahara in the context ofarrangements consistent with the principles and purposes of theCharter of the United Nations, and  noting  the role andresponsibilities of the parties in this respect, Reiterating  its call upon the parties and the neighbouring states to cooperatemore fully with the United Nations and with each other and tostrengthen their involvement to end the current impasse and toachieve progress towards a political solution,...

(April 24, 2014 | Washington, DC) Today the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (RFK Center) sent the following letter to all members of the United Nations Security Council, including: Samantha Power, United States Liu Jieyi, China Vitaly Ivanovich Churkin, Russian Federation Sir Mark Lyall Grant, United Kingdom Gérard Araud, France María Cristina Perceval, Argentina Gary Quinlan, Australia Chérif Mahamat Zene, Chad Octavio Errázuriz Guilisasti, Chile Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, Jordan Raimonda Murmokaitė, Lithuania Sylvie Lucas, Luxembourg Joy Ogwu, Nigeria Oh Joon, Republic of Korea Eugène-Richard Gasana, Rwanda A periodic report on Western Sahara by the RFK Center indicates that, to this day, the Moroccan government continues systematic violations of the basic human rights of the Sahrawi people. Only a permanent independent monitoring mechanism could ensure accountability for these violations.

By Matthew Russell Lee UNITED NATIONS, April 11 -- The murky annual UN cat and mouse process around Western Sahara in which the same human rights monitoring mechanism mandate that other UN Peacekeeping missions have is briefly proposed and then shot down by Permanent Member of the Security Council France has moved into a third stage. Inner City Press and the Free UN Coalition for Access on the morning of April 11 put online the first advance copy of the "Report of the Secretary General on the situation concerning Western Sahara," to be issued as a document of the Security Council under the symbol S/2014/258, here. At noon on April 11, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Stephane Dujarric if this is Ban's position. Dujarric said it is not final until it is final -- not a good sign, some say. Who wrote this? Who is changing it? Who CAN change it? Inner City Press asked, without answer. Video here. In Paragraph 100 on Page...

The UN Security Council must expand the mandate of its peacekeeping force in Western Sahara to include sustained human rights monitoring, said Amnesty International, amid clampdowns on peaceful protests and reports of activists tortured in custody during the past year. In a report to the Security Council yesterday UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for independent, impartial and sustained human rights monitoring in the territory and Sahrawi refugee camps in southern Algeria. “Extending the peacekeeping force’s mandate to include human rights would shed much-needed light on violations and abuses that would otherwise go unreported and provide an independent and impartial account on disputed allegations of human rights violations,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, in New York. “In the absence of an independent, impartial, comprehensive and sustained human rights monitoring, parties are allowed to trade accusations of rights abuses which fu...

Moroccan security forces use heavy-handed tactics to repress Saharawi organisations and campaigns for independence Western Sahara can only be described as a police state. I was there recently with the first British parliamentary delegation to the occupied territory and everywhere we went we were closely shadowed by undercover agents. Wherever we were driven by our Saharawi hosts, we were tailed by Moroccan police. Most chilling of all was the heavy police intimidation of a peaceful Saharawi demonstration we witnessed in the capital, Laayoune, the day before we left.  The demonstration was the latest in a series of monthly protests called by human rights groups to demand the release of all Saharawi political prisoners being held in Moroccan jails, and an extension of the mandate of the UN monitoring body, Minurso , to include human rights . Saharawi human rights groups had duly informed the Moroccan authorities of the protest in advance, but because all Saha...

In a discussion with me last week about freedom of expression in his country, Moroccan Minister of Communication Moustapha Khalfi boasted that Sahrawi people living in Western Sahara who opposed Moroccan rule over the contested former Spanish colony are free to post whatever they want online without facing cybercensorship. Activists in El-Ayoun, the capital of Western Sahara – or the “southern provinces” as Khalfi prefers to call it -- confirm that Morocco does not block their online content. But the interference with activists’ work comes earlier. People caught filming police actions risk getting their equipment confiscated; bloggers have been threatened, demonstrations blocked or tightly controlled so as to limit the images that make it online. The police here systematically block public demonstrations called by associations that the authorities suspect of favoring self-determination for the territory, which Morocco has claimed since invading and annexing it in 1975. In...

Demonstrations were held in occupied cities of Smara, Dakhla and Boujdour for expanding the powers of MINURSO for the protection and monitoring of human rights. MINURSO is the only UN mission which does not have a mechanism to monitor human rights. The Polisario Front engages the battle to repair this injustice. Supporters showered. Following a meeting with Abbas Cheibani, the Saharawi Ambassador in Montevideo, the Foreign Minister of Uruguay, Luis Almagro, stressed the need to provide the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) a component to monitor human rights, says a dispatch from the official Sahrawi news agency SPS, dated February 15, while Spanish organizations of solidarity with the Saharawi people protested last Saturday as part of the international campaign for the expansion of the prerogatives of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) for the protection and monitoring of human rights, the source added. Valuabl...