Smara (Refugee Camps), Feb 26, 2018 (SPS) – The deteriorating human rights situation in the occupied territories of Western Sahara and the suffering and acts of violence endured by the Sahrawi people require a United Nations mechanism guaranteeing the full implementation of the international humanitarian law on the ground, affirmed Sunday, in Smara, Minister of Occupied Territories and Sahrawi Community Abroad Bachir Mustapha.
“The human rights situation in the occupied territories requires extending the prerogatives of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) to include the protection of human rights and to try to find a UN mechanism ensuring the full implementation of international humanitarian law,” said the Sahrawi minister in an international conference on the peaceful resistance.
“The sufferings of the Sahrawi people are continuing because of the Moroccan stubbornness to flout the Sahrawi people’s natural right to self-determination, opening the way to the violation of other rights, including those of expression, rally, political opinion and creation of associations and organizations,” said Bachir Mustapha.
He invited the participants in the international conference on the peaceful resistance to emphasize the need to “place the issues of human rights, wall of shame and the plundering of the Sahrawi natural resources at the heart of the legal struggle and the humanitarian law.” (SPS)
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