Washington (USA), March 29, 2015 (SPS) - Saharawi human rights activist Aminetu Haidar has called on the Security Council to assume its responsibilities through expanding the prerogatives of MINURSO to include monitoring, protection and reporting about the situation of human rights in occupied Western Sahara.
It also requested the UN High Commission for Human Rights to intensify visits of its rapporteurs to Western Sahara and to send a mission to investigate violations of human rights of Sahrawis committed by Morocco in the occupied territories of Western Sahara for calling for self-determination of the Saharawi people.
Ms. Haidar, President of the Sahrawi Collective of Human Rights Defenders (CODESA), is on a working visit for a few days to the United States in partnership with the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation for Justice and Human Rights, to raise the public opinion in the US on the serious human rights violations by Morocco against the defenseless Saharawi civilians in the occupied territories of Western Sahara.
She received most of the Security Council members: the USA, Britain, Spain, New Zealand, Ireland and Nigeria. She also received the Director of the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations, the director of the peacekeeping missions and members of the High Commission for Human Rights.
During these meetings, Ms. Haidar stressed the need for the Security Council to fulfill its responsibilities by expanding the mandate of the MINURSO to include monitoring and protection of human rights in Western Sahara, as well as increased visits by special rapporteurs of the High Commissioner for human Rights to the occupied territories of Western Sahara, calling for expediting the dispatch of a mission to investigate violations committed in the occupied Saharawi cities. (SPS)
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