London, June 12, 2014 (SPS) - Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) published Thursday a “complete report listing all the clients, volumes, values and shipments relating to Morocco's exports of phosphate rock” from the occupied Western Sahara, indicated the organization in a statement on its official website.
The list presented in this report is complete for the calendar years 2012 and 2013, naming nearly all the shipments of the phosphates from occupied Western Sahara. The report attributes the purchases of Morocco’s production in Western Sahara in 2013 to ten named and two yet unknown importers in ten countries internationally. The two companies PotashCorp (US) and Lifosa (Lithuania), alone, accounted for 50% percent of all purchases.
The overview is made on the basis of tracking and anlysing 109 bulk vessels that arrived port in El Aaiun, Western Sahara.
The report details a total exported volume from Western Sahara in 2013 at 2,2 million tonnes, with an estimated value of $330 million, shipped in 48 bulk vessels. That is an increase of 400,000 tonnes from 2012, the report shows.
In addition to naming the involved companies, this report also identifies potential buyers, as well as a “green list” of companies previously associated with such trade, but which no longer purchase.
The phosphate rock is illegally exploited by the Moroccan government in Western Sahara, a territory that it is brutally occupying. The exports are Morocco’s main source of income from the occupied territories. Representatives of the Saharawis have been consistently outspoken against the trade, both in the UN, generally and to specific companies, recalled the statement.
WSRW called on all companies involved in the trade immediately halt all purchases of Western Sahara phosphates until a solution to the conflict has been found. Investors are requested to engage, or divest unless action is taken. (SPS)
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The report is here:
http://www.wsrw.org/files/