The Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) International Observatory has called on the UN to establish a mechanism to place proceeds from the illegal exploitation of natural resources in occupied Western Sahara under international administration until the conflict is resolved. resolved in accordance with international law.
“Allowing Morocco to systematically profit from the wealth of the territory not only calls into question the good faith of the parties necessary (for the supervision of) negotiations, but also contributes to financing the illegal occupation in progress while depriving the Sahrawi people of their resources for its current and future use,” WSRW wrote in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The UN SG is expected to present his report on Western Sahara to the Security Council in early October. As such, the NGO calls “for a more balanced and more truthful report on the plundering (…) of resources” of this non-autonomous territory occupied by Morocco.
The NGO asks the UN SG to “take due consideration” of Morocco’s plunder of the territory’s resources in its next report, rather than boiling the issue down to the fact that the kingdom “continues to make considerable investments in infrastructure and economic development projects west of the berm, while the Polisario Front continues to protest against these activities”.
“We consider that the scale of the exploitation and its legal, political and ethical consequences deserve a fuller account,” writes the organization.
The observatory responsible for monitoring the exploitation of natural resources in Western Sahara has also raised two questions that deserve clarification from Guterres.
Firstly, why does the current Secretary General of the United Nations not refer in any of his reports to the Security Council to any of the judgments of the Court of the European Union (EU) on Western Sahara, when his predecessor did?
As such, WSRW points out that “the EU – which is not a direct party to the Western Sahara conflict – is increasingly faced with the consequences of the UN’s inability to resolve the conflict, and has been caught between a rock and a hard place trying to reconcile the irreconcilable: the demands defined by international law and its own Court on the one hand, and on the other hand, the aggressive demands of its neighbor to the south, Morocco, who does not hesitate to use issues such as migration and the fight against terrorism to impose on the EU its untenable position on Western Sahara”.
“This is not the type of relationship that the UN wishes to encourage between its member states, and it shows the need for the UN to engage more substantially on the question of Western Sahara’s resources”, insists the Observatory. .
On the other hand, WSRW called on the UN SG to explain why previous reports have insisted on the continuation of commercial traffic in the Guerguerat area, when this is a major point of contention between the parties to the conflict.
“When Morocco and the Polisario concluded the ceasefire agreement, there was no point of commerce in Guerguerat. Over the years, despite the condemnation of the UN, Morocco has developed this road through the UN buffer zone, which it has since used to transport resources out of occupied Western Sahara.