Brussels, 25 May 2020 (SPS) - The week of solidarity with the peoples of the Non-self-Governing Territories proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations between 25 and 31 May, must be an opportunity to remind member states and international opinion that many peoples are still deprived of their fundamental and imprescriptible right to self-determination, announced on Sunday the European Conference on Support and Solidarity with the Saharawi People (EUCOCO).
In Africa, the last colony, Western Sahara, was deprived of this right by Spain and has now been occupied militarily by Morocco for more than 45 years, recalled EUCOCO President Pierre Galand in a message on this occasion.
"It has already been 30 years since the Security Council established the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).
This referendum process, which had been approved by Morocco and the Polisario Front in 1989, was to be completed within two years," said Galand in the same message.
However, the referendum is still blocked due to "delaying tactics opposed by Morocco, the occupying power under international law. This government is violating all its obligations to both the people in the occupied territories and prisoners and carries out the plundering of the country's natural resources with the complicity or complacency of many states and companies of the European Union," he indicated.
"At this time of great insecurity following the Covid-19 pandemic, we call on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to act urgently to respect the rights of the Sahrawi people to their self-determination by proposing to the UN General Assembly the recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (RASD), a member state of the African Union."
Mr Galand also called in his message this week on behalf of the "non-self-governing" peoples to "reactivate multilateralism in order to restore its full capacity at the United Nations and to put an end to the great suffering of citizens, in particular women and children who are the first victims of non-right situations in the world". (SPS)
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