Press statement by Oubi Bucharaya, Representative of the Frente POLISARIO in Switzerland, to the United Nations and International Organizations in Geneva:
“Morocco is a military occupying force of an African country and the only country on the continent that has not ratified the African Charter on Human Rights. Therefore, it cannot preside over the United Nations Human Rights Council on behalf of Africa.”
The 47 members of the United Nations Human Rights Council will on the morning of Wednesday, January 10, 2024, vote on the election of the president of the 18th cycle of the Human Rights Council, which goes to the Africa group for the year 2024. The election will be made between two candidates: the Republic of South Africa and the Kingdom of Morocco.
In this context, it is pertinent to point out some issues:
1. Morocco would not have dared to run for a post of this importance, both from a symbolic and procedural point of view, had it not been for its chronic feeling of impunity; despite its terrible record in the field of Human Rights, whether in Morocco itself, or in Western Sahara, a territory it has occupied militarily since 1975 and where it imposes a state of absolute repression, exposing its people to all forms of systematic human rights violations.
2. Morocco’s insistence on not bowing to the majority opinion of the African Group in Geneva to follow the established tradition of endorsing the candidate within the African Group in order not to give the image of the continent’s inability to solve its problems democratically, is the greatest proof of its firm conviction that it would lose any vote within the African Group. Morocco is the only African country that still refuses to ratify the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. It is also the African country that continues to systematically violate the founding charter of the African Union, in particular Article 4, concerning the obligation to respect the borders inherited at the time of independence.
3. Morocco is the African country most strongly condemned and denounced by all international human rights organizations, and at the same time the one that cooperates the least with the UN Human Rights Council. Among other practices, it has repeatedly prevented UN technical missions from visiting Western Sahara since 2015. In the said occupied territory, the most heinous crimes are committed, according to, among others, testimonies of the UN Committee on Torture and the Committee on Racial Discrimination, as well as the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders. To date, Morocco has refused to accept any MINURSO mandate that would include human rights monitoring among its responsibilities. Moreover, it has systematically expelled over 400 international observers from the territory in recent years. It also continues to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from carrying out its mission in Western Sahara. Morocco commits all kinds of human rights violations against its own people, repressing and arresting all demonstrators and imprisoning numerous journalists. Morocco is directly responsible for the repression of African immigrants, against whom it commits terrible massacres, most recently in Melilla in June 2022.
4. Morocco is a country whose corruption scandals are followed by numerous courts, filling the pages of newspapers, television programs and investigative reports in many countries, particularly in Belgium in the context of what is known as “MoroccoGate” in the European institutions. The same applies to reports of Rabat’s involvement in illegal espionage around the world using the “Pegasus” application.
5. If it comes to pass, Morocco’s election to the presidency of the Human Rights Council will be further proof of the profound structural dysfunction of international institutions, and an insult to Africa. Morocco is the country least able to reflect African values in the current cycle of the presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Geneva, 08 January 2024