Birlehlu (Liberated Territories), January 26, 2015 (SPS) – President of the Republic, Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Mohamed Abdelaziz, sent a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, protesting Kosmos Energy drilling activities and urging the UN Security Council to stop seabed oil drilling on the coast of occupied Western Sahara. President Abdeaziz considered the drilling operation underway in Western Sahara as “a serious provocation and a real threat to peace and stability in Western Sahara and the Maghreb region.”
In his letter President Abdelaziz underscored the deep concern of the Saharawi people about the activity, noting they have been “consistent in their rejection” of petroleum exploration and development in the occupied area of Western Sahara.
A newly commissioned drill ship, the m.v. Atwood Achiever, recently entered the coastal area of Western Sahara and started a drilling program in deep water northwest of Dakhla, in the so-called “Boujdour Offshore Block” of seabed license areas. The drilling, being carried out for the United States oil company Kosmos Energy Ltd., will apparently continue for three months.
Petroleum development in occupied Western Sahara is illegal on two grounds. The activity violates the right of the Saharawi as a non-self-governing, that is, colonized people, to control and disposition of their natural resources without their consent and the benefit of the activity to them. The government of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic protests the development and export of resources, doing so in response to phosphate rock mining and the recently renewed European Union Fisheries Partnership Agreement. Petroleum development is also illegal under international humanitarian law, which prohibits the pillage of natural resources in the circumstances of a continuing armed occupation.
The UN is in a special position to stop resource exploitation in Western Sahara because it continues to be responsible to hold a self-determination referendum for the Saharawi people, and because the UN Security Council received legal advice directly about seabed oil exploration and exploitation in a celebrated opinion by its jurisconsult, the Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, Mr. Hans Corell. In that advice, given in 2002, any “further” exploration or exploitation without the consent of and benefit to the Saharawi people would be illegal.(SPS)
062/090