Polisario Child Soldier That Taints The Visit From Mistura To Tindouf

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A Polisario child soldier in the presence of Staffan de Mistura in the Polisario camps, accompanied by a UN delegation, Staffan de Mistura, special envoy of the Secretary General of the United Nations went this weekend to the Polisario camps in Tindouf, the second stop on his first tour of the region since his appointment in last November.

He was welcomed by the representative of the Polisario Front to the United Nations and coordinator with Minurso, Sidi Mohamed Omar who indicated shortly before that the referendum, an option demanded by the movement for decades was obsolete. An outing painfully reframed by the Polisario man in Algiers.

The UN envoy met, over two days, with other leaders of the directed movement, including Brahim Ghali, Khatri Addouh, Mustapha Sidi El-Bachir and Hamma Salama, and listened to the opinions of his chieftaincy on the question of the resumption of negotiations with Morocco as parties to the conflict, and "the means for a constructive relaunch of the political process in Western Sahara", highlight the communication channels of the Front and Algiers after the ceasefire declared by the Polisario.

Military recruitment of children is a war crime

• Sahrawi children are forced to move to Cuba, with the aim of indoctrinating them ideologically, subjecting them to military training and exploiting them while depriving them of all contact with their families. • This forced immigration is considered a serious violation of the provisions of the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, hence the civil and criminal liability of Polisario leaders and their accomplices. • The Polisario armed movement continues its massive enlistment of children and minors as soldiers, to fill the void that threatens the survival of the separatist entity. • In this wake, the French NGO “International Alliance for the Defense of Rights and Freedoms (AIDL)”, published, on 04.01.2021, a statement condemning the recruitment of child soldiers by the Polisario front. • The NGO in question reiterated its total condemnation of the recruitment and exploitation of children in conflict and war zones, qualifying this act as an international crime which requires prosecution and international monitoring of all those involved. . The leaders of the Polisario armed movement must explain and provide clarifications on the enlistment of children, recalling, in this regard, that "any recruitment of children, their exploitation and their involvement in conflicts and wars is completely prohibited and criminalized in international law”. • The military recruitment of children is prohibited by all international conventions and treaties, namely the Charter of the United Nations, the Charter of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Political, Economic and Social Law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, the Vancouver principles, the Paris principles, and Resolution 2602 in operative paragraph 1. • Weapons are given to children instead of looking after their education and development. • The Polisario anchors criminal values in children through the use of weapons. • Algeria must assume its responsibility for crimes against children's rights in the Tindouf camps, since they are committed on its territory. • Several images and videos show the training that the Polisario officials to Sahrawi children in the Tindouf Camps. • Sahrawi children are recruited without the consent of their parents. • All Sahrawi children are forced to participate in all military and political ceremonies. The last visit of the Personal Envoy of the UN SG for the Sahara to Tindouf is the perfect illustration of this. • Sahrawi children are indoctrinated from an early age to hate Morocco. . Sahrawi children are sent to the front line to deter the intervention of Moroccan forces.

During his visit, the Italo-Swedish who succeeds in his difficult mission to the German Horst Köhler, who resigned in 2019, was taken to various sites in Tindouf and Rabouni, including a war memorial and a medical dispensary run by the Crescent. Red.

The observers present, however, pointed out that during his visit, he was flanked by at least one child soldier (visible in one of the images released by official communication from Algiers) while "the recruitment and use of children in armed conflicts are strictly prohibited by international law" and that the enlistment of children of a certain age can also amount to "a war crime", noted the semi-official Moroccan press.

Staffan de Mistura began his visit to the region from Rabat on Thursday, a stage during which Moroccan diplomacy reiterated its positions, namely the autonomy of the territory as the only framework for discussions and the involvement of the four belligerents in the regional conflict, namely Morocco, Algeria, the Polisario and Mauritania.

Morocco

Polisario

Tindouf

Child Soldiers