Brussels, 28 November 2021 (SPS) - The international energy companies established in the Sahrawi territories must exit the occupied Sahrawi territories immediately, said the Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) in its latest report on the Moroccan renewable energy projects in Western Sahara.
In this report entitled “Green washing occupation,” the NGO asks the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and its State Parties to “challenge Morocco’s systematically erroneous climate reports.”
The report noted that this country, an occupying power of Western Sahara, “uses the green energy to embellish its occupation.”
Underlining that by 2030, “half of Morocco’s wind energy production could be generated illegally in occupied Western Sahara,” while its share of generated solar power may by then reach 32.64 % of its total solar capacity, WSRW said that this country is erecting its largest energy project on occupied territories to date.”
According to the NGO, it is “another step forward in its comprehensive plan to build controversial infrastructure on the land it illegally holds.”
WSRW asks the Moroccan government to comply with the international law and to stop carrying out infrastructure projects in a territory under occupation, without the consent of the Sahrawi people and to “enable the international observers, including the United Nations and the international climate and human rights organizations to visit the occupied territories independently and freely.”
The energy produced on the occupied Sahrawi territories “increases Morocco’s dependency on the territory that it occupies,” said WRSW in its report, underlining that these projects “fundamentally undermine the UN peace efforts in Western Sahara directed towards allowing the expression of the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people.
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