The Sunday Mail
Sunday Mail Correspondent
MOROCCO should “review and reconsider” its rejection of all recommendations relating to the holding of the UN-mandated referendum in the occupied Western Sahara to enable Saharawi people to determine their own destiny, Zimbabwe’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Ambassador Stuart Comberbach, has said.
In a statement to the UN Human Rights Council on Friday, Ambassador Comberbach noted that Morocco had rejected five recommendations submitted during the peer review exercise conducted in November 2022. The recommendations called upon the country to enable people of Western Sahara to freely exercise their rights to self-determination and control of their natural resources.
Morocco has engaged in military occupation of vast swathes of the Western Sahara, imprisoned hundreds of Saharawi citizens and given free access to its own companies and European firms to exploit both mineral and fishing resources of the territory.
“The right to self-determination is fundamental to the enjoyment, by the Saharawi people, of all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights”, said Ambassador Comberbach.
“The resumption of the armed struggle in that territory — which no one could possibly have wanted — is the inevitable consequence of the frustration and anger within a people unfairly and for too long denied their inalienable rights and freedoms”.
Challenging Morocco’s assertions that the Human Rights Council has no jurisdiction over the situation in what it refers to as its “southern provinces”, Ambassador Comberbach stated that “on the contrary, the recommendations to allow the referendum on self-determination and for Morocco to refrain from the exploitation of Western Sahara’s natural resources without the consent of the legitimate representatives of the Saharawi people, are indeed relevant and fall well within the oversight mandate of this Council”.
South Africa, Venezuela and a raft of NGO’s joined the debate, further reinforcing points made by Zimbabwe.
Although there is little sign that Morocco will heed such appeals, the country is coming under increasing pressure from within the occupied territory as a consequence of the resumption, by the Polisario Front, of its armed struggle against foreign occupation forces, and the intensifying scrutiny of the situation by concerned members of the European Parliament.
In recent months, a number of European MPs have been suspended following revelations that they had accepted payment from Morocco to sway their position and pronouncements within parliamentary debates on the question of Western Sahara, especially the illegal exploitation of the territory’s natural resources by a multitude of European companies.
Previously, the EU Court of Justice found that “since Western Sahara is a territory that is separate and distinct from Morocco, and, as the latter has no sovereignty or administering mandate over the territory, EU-Morocco bilateral agreements cannot lawfully affect Western Sahara unless with the consent of the people of the territory, expressed through the UN-recognised representative of the people, the Polisario Front.
While the European Commission has appealed against these findings of its own courts, with a final decision expected to be delivered in September 2023, European companies continue to ramp up their commercial activities in the occupied territories, specifically in the fish sector, where exports in 2021 generated in excess of 600 million Euros.
