Algiers, Nov 12, 2013 (SPS) - The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) is "the only contemporary mission of peacekeeping without a mandate to monitor human rights," a diplomatic source reported.
This observation has been recalled in a message by U.S. NGO Robert F. Kennedy Center in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, who will travel soon to Rabat.
MINURSO, it deplored Thursday in a message to US Secretary of State, is "the only UN mission that does not include a mandate for monitoring human rights."
It advocated the inclusion of a mechanism to monitor human rights on the occasion of the renewal of the MINURSO mandate in April 2014 by the UN Security Council.
Such a mechanism is considered by almost all countries (including USA), international organizations (UN, AU, European Parliament) and the Human Rights NGO, as a requirement to the repeated human rights violations committed by the Moroccan occupying authorities against the Saharawis.
The introduction of this mechanism would provide independent and unbiased reports on the situation of human rights in the territory considered since 1964 by the UN as a non-autonomous territory, they said.
Secretary General of the Association of Friends of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Regine Villemont, wished, in turn, that the renewal of the mandate of MINURSO in April could lead to an amendment expanding missions of this UN body the protection human rights in the occupied territories of Western Sahara.
"This last barrier that protects the Moroccan occupation should disappear, enforce respect for human rights and strengthen the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination," she said.
The special UN envoy Christopher Ross himself has witnessed during his recent visits to the occupied Western Sahara, that despite a Moroccan military impressive and brutal repression, thousands of Sahrawis braved the threat to demonstrate their commitment to their right to express themselves on their own fate and denounce the conditions of occupation. (SPS)
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