Western Sahara: 2022, a year of diplomatic and legal successes

Sahara Occidental

ALGIERS – APS.dz.- The Saharawi question experienced, during the year 2022, important diplomatic and legal successes on the international scene, but also a wave of solidarity without precedent with the Saharawi people, despite the efforts of Morocco to hide and hush up an existential truth of a people fighting for its independence.

Two years after the resumption of the war following Morocco’s violation of the 1991 ceasefire with the Polisario Front in this non-self-governing territory, international bodies have continued to express their deep concern about the volatile situation in occupied Western Sahara, calling for respect for international legality and the resolutions of the UN and the African Union (AU).

Although the “separate and distinct” status of Western Sahara has been clearly defined by the various Courts of Justice, Morocco continues to violate the rights of the Sahrawi people and to impose a “blockade”, preventing all foreign delegations from accessing the occupied territories to report the facts.

However, the re-establishment of relations with certain countries committed to respecting the right to self-determination, the decisions of the various courts of justice and the participation of the Saharawi president, Brahim Ghali, in numerous international events, bear witness to the impetus given to the Saharawi cause.

Thus the diplomatic success of the Polisario Front began to take shape last February when the Saharawi President took part, together with his African and European counterparts, in the work of the 6th European Union/African Union summit in Brussels.

Mr Ghali had then attended this type of summit for the second time, following the 2017 summit in Abidjan, given the Sahrawi Republic’s (SADR) status as a founding member of the AU, enjoying all rights and duties.

It would be recalled that its participation in the 8th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD8) organised in Tunis had aroused the ire of the Makhzen, who, without common sense, created a laughable political crisis with Tunisia, demonstrating a sense of resounding failure to achieve their AU membership objectives in 2017.

Makhzen (Morocco) no longer counting coups

The year 2022 also saw the appointment of the first ambassadors of Botswana and Angola to the Saharawi Republic since the establishment of relations between the two countries, as well as the historic first visit of the Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister, Torres Zelaya Gerardo, to the Saharawi refugee camps.

The African continent also stood out with the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with SADR in South Sudan, suspended in 2018, and Kenya reaffirming its support for the indisputable and inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination through the organisation of a free and fair referendum led by the UN and the AU.

And in Latin America, Peru and Colombia announced the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with SADR, in accordance with the principles and objectives of the United Nations Charter.

On the legal front, the Moroccan occupier received a slap in the face from the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights with a judgment of 22 September, in which it denounced the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, calling on all member states of the AU to find a permanent solution to this occupation and to guarantee the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination.

This comes on top of the decision of the French Council of State, issued on the initiative of the Confédération paysanne, to ban the import of agricultural products from the occupied Sahrawi territory, claiming that Western Sahara does not belong to the Kingdom of Morocco, as ruled by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in 2016 and 2018, underlining that “the presentation of these products as originating in Morocco violates EU law and the judgments of the Court”.

Moreover, the Sahrawi cause enjoys strong support in international fora.

At the UN, during the session of the Special Committee on Decolonisation, known as the “Committee of 24”, several representatives of countries and international organisations reiterated their support for respect for the inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination, denouncing the violence and human rights violations exercised by the Moroccan occupation in occupied Western Sahara.

Also in Sweden and Germany, the question of Western Sahara was debated in the Scandinavian parliament and the Saharawi flag was raised by the authorities of the German city of Bremen on the pole of the regional parliament, in the context of the commemoration of the 46th anniversary of the proclamation of SADR.

The associative movement is not lagging behind, since a global coordination of young people in solidarity with Western Sahara has been created, in which different youth organisations from all over the world are represented, to raise awareness of the Saharawi cause on a global scale and to mobilise support for the Saharawi people.

The last conference of the European Coordination of Support and Solidarity with the Saharawi People (EUCOCO), held in December in Berlin, also reaffirmed its support for the right to self-determination for the independence of Western Sahara.