Algeria calls for international support for Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic at UN
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People of the SADR “cannot remain indefinitely under the mercy and stubbornness of the occupying state of Morocco”
Algeria’s permanent representative to the United Nations Office and other International Organizations in Geneva, Ambassador Lazhar Soualem, called on the international community with a particular emphasis on the United Nations, to fulfil its obligations to the people of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) by ensuring their right to self-determination.
The SADR is currently under occupation by the Kingdom of Morocco.
In an address at the 52nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Ambassador Soualem stressed the paramount importance Algeria gives to UN Security Council’s resolutions, to the relevant jurisprudence and to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice regarding the territory of Western Sahara occupied by Morocco.
The Algerian diplomat said all the aforementioned resolutions and opinions “consider the conflict as a decolonisation issue, whose settlement inevitably requires the application of the principle of self-determination.”
The permanent representative of Algeria to the United Nations Office and other International Organizations in Geneva called on all States, the UN Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to “fulfil their international commitments” and “assume their responsibilities towards the people of Western Sahara, who are still under occupation.”
He also called for ensuring to Sahrawi people their inalienable and imprescriptible right to self-determination.
The people of Western Sahara, he said, “cannot remain indefinitely under the mercy and stubbornness of the occupying state of Morocco, which continues to shy away from its international commitments toward the last colony in Africa.”
Morocco has been trying to garner international support for its strategy for the SADR, favouring limited autonomy for the region under the rule of the Kingdom. It has rejected calls for a referendum, mainly from the Polisario Front, as well as a decades long consensus among African states. Morocco fears that it would most likely lose such a plebiscite.
In reaching out to Western powers, the Kingdom of Morocco seeks to undo a consensus that is positioned against its occupation the SADR, which is widely thought to be “Africa’s last colony”.
Morocco’s diplomacy concerning the SADR has less traction in Africa with only Kenyan President William Ruto seemingly backing a plan that flies in the face of hitherto accepted African precedent. Ruto has previously made gaffe-laden statement on Twitter that forced the Foreign Ministry of Kenya to make clarifying statements that effectively walked back Ruto’s tweets.
In 1979, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution A / RES / 34/37 which provided “the unequal rights of Western Sahara people in their own discretion and liberty, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the Charter of the Organization of the African Unity and the purposes of the General Assembly.”
