51st Session Of The UNHRC: Morocco Slams Polisario, Calls For Dismantling Of The Tindouf Camps

Geneva, September 23 (TNA) Since the installation of the Tindouf camps in southwestern Algeria, the Algerian security services and the Polisario front have committed massive human rights violations - with the humanitarian atrocities that accompany it - against the backdrop of conflict in the Sahara.

Although Polisario acknowledged that human rights violations have occurred in the past, it did not provide clear data on enforced disappearances, kidnappings, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, torture in detention centers, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Polisario remains an organization beyond any control, despite the crimes and serious violations it has committed since its creation. Indeed, the Polisario has made the Tindouf camps a platform to sponsor arbitrary and terrorist kidnappings, looting and attacks, causing thousands of victims, not only among the residents of the Tindouf camps, but also of Mauritania, Mali, South Korea, France, Spain and Morocco. Thus, the Polisario claimed victims following armed ground operations or attacks on boats and ships near the coasts of neighboring countries.

Nearly five decades of violations and inhuman treatment, the most notable of which were torture and arbitrary executions, took place in a climate of impunity, where the Algerian recourse mechanisms: the only authority responsible for investigating all violations committed on its territory, refused to process or examine any case relating to the violations committed by the Polisario.

The Polisario, was imposed by the Algerian authorities to carry out its role in the management of camp affairs, in violation of the provisions of international law, benefiting from the immunity and protection of the host country, regardless of the seriousness of the violations, beyond the control of the UN mechanisms concerned with the protection of human rights.

Although the right to life is guaranteed by Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, exceptional circumstances, including the state of war, the threat of war, domestic political instability or any other emergency situation, may not be invoked to justify extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

However, the Polisario has continued, for decades, to flagrantly violate the right to life through arbitrary and extrajudicial executions, while inciting violence and murder, through successive calls from its board of directors at congresses and media outings calling for escalation, resistance and struggle on all fronts.

In this context, the Polisario Executive Board exploits and mobilizes women and children to export violence and murder outside the camps, as the only way to intimidate its critics.

1. Morocco has urged Algeria to implement Algerian national law throughout Algerian territory, including the Tindouf camps;

2. Call on the host country, Algeria, to conduct a rapid and impartial investigation into allegations of extrajudicial enforcement, in order to determine with certainty the causes, and time of death, the persons responsible for them, as well as the circumstances in which it was committed;

3. Invite the competent authorities to take the necessary measures to prevent cases of excessive use of force against defenseless refugees;

4. Call for the appearance of the perpetrators and instigators of these violations, to fair trials in accordance with international human rights law and international humanitarian law, as imprescriptible crimes;

5. Morocco denounces the illegal delegation of the powers of the Algerian State to the Polisario in the management of the Tindouf camps, in flagrant violation of the rules of international law;

6. Call for the recognition of refugee status for residents of the Tindouf camps, with the obligation for the host country, Algeria, to identify them, in accordance with the relevant Security Council resolutions, and in accordance with the Geneva Convention on Refugees and its Optional Protocol;

7.Also a call on the international community to take action to hold Polisario responsible for the massive violations committed against the residents of the camps, as a non-state entity and armed group, within the framework of continental, regional and international human rights mechanisms;

8. Denounce the phenomenon of forced recruitment of children, adolescents and young people into the army, their normalization with the ideology of militias and hate speech, violence and war propaganda;

9. Recall the United Nations reports and documents that sounded the alarm about the situation among young people in the Tindouf camps;

10. Hold the Polisario and the host country, fully responsible for the militarization of children and young people in the camps, making them an easy target for recruitment by armed groups operating in the Sahel-Saharan region;

11.Draw the attention of the international community to the direct threat to security and peace in the region and the neighborhood due to the intersection between the separatist role of the Polisario organization and the terrorist role of armed and terrorist groups;

12. Urge the international community to work on the implementation of education, training and education programs to promote a culture of human rights values and education for peace, tolerance and coexistence;

13. Are sounding the alarm about the need to stop the recruitment of children inside the Tindouf camps, in accordance with the relevant obligations of the host country;

14. Invite the international community to intervene to dismantle the camps, find peaceful ways of dialogue and guarantee the right to return.