PUSL.- Mr Loïc Prud’homme alerts the Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs about the situation in Western Sahara and the fate of Sahrawi refugees.
At its meeting of April 27, 2018, the UN Security Council voted a resolution extending for six months the mandate of the UN mission for the organization of a referendum in Western Sahara.
On October 31, 2018, this mandate will be questioned and with it a process that has been going on for 27 years and still not finalized to date. This process was set up to respond to the demand of the Saharawi people to assert their right to self-determination in the territory of Western Sahara, materialized by the declaration of independence of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). in 1976 by the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi representation supported by Algeria.
For more than 30 years, this non-autonomous territory has a conflict with Morocco and its status remains to be defined today. Morocco continues to perpetrate persecutions with proven risk of torture on the Saharawi people, 170,000 members of those currently live in refugee camps in southern Algeria, in deplorable conditions and without any prospect of exit. In spite of this situation, the inertia of international diplomacy is total, letting grow a source of indignation more and more violent and dangerous for the maintenance of peace.
This status quo is forcing a growing number of refugees to reach European territory, particularly France. Many of them found themselves in the Gironde and faced difficulties in simply asserting their rights, which were subjected to living conditions just as difficult as in the camps in southern Algeria.
No status is recognized: very rarely that of political refugee, never yet stateless for which some have been waiting for an answer for more than two years. They live in shantytowns where they always end up being expelled by the public authorities.
In concluding his last report on the question of Western Sahara, the Secretary-General of the United Nations considers verbatim that “this conflict has lasted too long and must be ended in the interest of the population, so that it can live in dignity, including for those displaced for more than 40 years, as well as for the stability of the entire region, which faces many political, economic and security problems “.
This is why he asks the Government how France, a member of the United Nations Security Council, conceives the application of international law in Western Sahara and the solutions to treat Saharawi nationals with greater dignity in the French territory.
