Western Sahara youth organization urges UN Human Rights Council to safeguard Saharawi peoples’ rights – JURIST
Saharawi Youth Union, advocating for the independence of Western Sahara, and the International Service for Human Rights urged the UN Human Rights Council on Monday to “take action” and uphold its obligations in ensuring the protection of Saharawi peoples’ human rights and access to human rights mechanisms.
The Saharawi Youth Union (UJSARIO) addressed the UN Human Rights Council in its 58th session, delivering a joint statement alongside the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR). In their statement, the union called upon the council to:
take decisive measures to reinforce the authority of UN human rights mechanisms and ensure that Morocco complies with its obligations, including protecting those engaging with these bodies from reprisals, and to provide access to human rights bodies to occupied Western Sahara.
The organization states that the international community has failed to commit to its decolonization and human rights obligations. It further highlights Western Sahara’s “continued occupation” and Saharan people’s “systematic oppression” through repression of rights, countless violations, and obstructions of access to human rights mechanisms. In addition to the targeting and suppressing the freedom of expression of activists, journalists, and civil society actors engaging in peaceful activism, Saharawi people have also been subject to systematic violations of their human rights, including “arbitrary detentions, torture, enforced disappearances, racial and economic discrimination, suppression of fundamental freedoms, and the plundering of natural resources.”
Additionally, the union urged Moroccan authorities to release Saharawi political prisoners, as well as activists arbitrarily detained, and stop the “illegal economic exploitation of Western Sahara’s resources”. Pressing the council to address Morocco “intensif[ying] its repressive policies,” and failing to comply with international obligations through actions such as denying access to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and UN Special Procedures, warranting accountability.
The Saharawi Youth Union (UJSARIO) is the youth wing of the Saharawi national liberation movement, the Polisario Front, seeking an independent Western Sahara. Claims to sovereignty over the long-disputed territory of Western Sahara have been the source of a decades-long struggle between the pro-independence movement and the Moroccan government. Morocco, in control of 80 percent of the territory, refers to it as ‘Moroccan Sahara,’ while the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), promulgated as a state by the Polisario Front, considers Western Sahara occupied territory in its claim to sovereignty.
The UN recognizes Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory. However, the General Assembly maintains its territory is “a question of decolonization which remains to be completed based on the exercise by the people of Western Sahara of their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.” As of 2022, 47 UN member states recognize the SADR as independent.
UJSARIO emphasizes, “The future of Saharawi people remains uncertain while rulings affirming their right to self-determination remain unimplemented.”
