Geneva, March 4, 2015 (SPS) - Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ramtane Lamamra on Tuesday in Geneva called on High Commissioner for Human Rights to set up an independent mechanism for monitoring the situation of human rights in Western Sahara.
“The MINURSO deployed for over two decades is paradoxically not accompanied by a human rights monitoring mechanism. It is also urgent that the High Commissioner for Human Rights attaches more importance to this by setting up an independent mechanism monitoring the situation of human rights in Western Sahara,” said Lamamra in a speech at the works of the 28th session of the UN Council of Human Rights (March 2 to 5).
“This is not a luxury but a necessity on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice which established the relevance and primacy of the right of its people to self-determination,” he added.
Algerian FM added “the situation in the Western Sahara territory where the Polisario Front, which joined the peaceful settlement dynamics sponsored by the United Nations, also faces the denial of the right to self-determination of a people whose resistance spans forty years.”
“The stagnation of the conflict, as well as the forced exile of a large refugee population in my country, is more than a concern and the effect of habituation of the international community must be replaced by an increased commitment to ending this dramatic situation,” he stated. (SPS)
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