Geneva, 8 January 2024 (SPS) - The representative of the Polisario Front in Switzerland and to the United Nations and international organizations in Geneva, Oubi Bouchraya Bachir, said on Monday that Morocco could not chair the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of Africa, due in particular to its status as a military occupier in Western Sahara and its refusal to ratify the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.
In a press statement, Oubi Bouchraya explained that Morocco "would not have dared to run for such an important post, both symbolically and procedurally, without its chronic sense of impunity, despite its terrible record on 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 and systematic human rights violations."
"If Morocco's election to the presidency of the Human Rights Council goes ahead, it 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", he stressed.
According to the Sahrawi diplomat, the Moroccan insistence on not bowing to the majority opinion of the African Group in Geneva to follow the established tradition of approving the candidate within the said group, in order not to give the image of the continent's inability to resolve its problems democratically, "is the greatest proof of its firm conviction that it will lose any vote within the African Group."
"In addition to being strongly condemned and denounced by all international human rights organizations, 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, notably Article 4 which stipulates the obligation to respect the borders inherited at the time of independence," he recalled.
He added that since 2015, UN technical missions have been prevented from going to Western Sahara by the Moroccan occupier who also refuses to accept any mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Organization of a Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) including among its prerogatives the monitoring of respect for human rights.
"Morocco commits all kinds of human rights violations against its own people (...) It is directly responsible for the repression of African immigrants, against whom it commits terrible massacres, the latest of which was the Nador/Melilla massacre in June 2022," Oubi Bouchraya Bachir said again.