Morocco Elected to UN Human Rights Council Presidency: A Front Against Human Rights

BY: Hana Saada

ALGIERS-  “UN opts for impunity,” is the prevailing sentiment following the “absurd” election of the representative of the Alaouite regime to the presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The ambassador of the Alaouite kingdom has been elected to lead the council for the year 2024, receiving 30 out of 47 votes from council member countries, defeating South Africa with only 17 votes in a secret ballot held yesterday. Long before this election, the ambassador of the Makhzen regime boasted of having the support of the Arab League as the sole candidate for months.

However, there is no mystery for human rights defenders worldwide, for whom Rabat represents an autocratic regime with numerous human rights violations. Morocco has militarily occupied the Western Sahara since 1975, subjecting its people to systematic repression and regularly using sophisticated means to kill civilians from neighboring countries, including 80 Sahrawis, 66 Mauritians, 3 Algerians, and 3 Sudanese. Morocco also kills sub-Saharan migrants at the borders of Ceuta and Melilla. To complete the circle, the Rabat regime is the only one on the continent that has not ratified the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Human Rights Movements Alarmed

The choice of Morocco has indeed raised alarm among human rights defenders, especially movements in solidarity with the Sahrawi people worldwide, and particularly activists in the occupied territories of Western Sahara who led an international campaign against Morocco’s candidacy.

They argue that “with this choice, the UN and the international community reward the impunity of a country that systematically violates the human rights of the Sahrawis and the Moroccan people itself.” This also represents “the victory of the impunity of an oppressive regime over the country of ‘Madiba,’ which led the noblest struggle against apartheid and oppression,” they indignantly state. The Polisario Front warned that Morocco, a country that violates all UN resolutions and militarily occupies Western Sahara, cannot preside over the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The representative of the Polisario Front, Oubi Bouchraya Bachir, stated on Monday that Morocco “would not have dared to run for such an important position without its chronic sense of impunity, despite its terrible human rights record, both in Morocco itself and in Western Sahara, a territory it has militarily occupied since 1975, where it imposes a state of absolute repression and systematic human rights violations.”

Proof of Structural Dysfunction in International Institutions

Morocco’s election to the presidency of the Human Rights Council is “additional proof of the deep structural dysfunction of international institutions,” highlighted Oubi Bouchraya Bachir. Otherwise, how can one interpret the fact that this country can take the presidency of a UN body while carrying a record full of violations? “In addition to being strongly condemned and denounced by all international human rights organizations, Morocco is the only African country that still refuses to ratify the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

It is also the African country that continues to systematically violate the founding charter of the African Union, especially Article 4, which stipulates the obligation to respect the borders inherited at the time of independence,” he recalled. Since 2015, UN technical missions have been prevented from going to Western Sahara by the Moroccan occupier, which also refuses to accept any mandate from the UN Mission for the Organization of a Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) that includes monitoring respect for human rights.

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