The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) regrets the UN Security Council decision not to extend the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) to human rights issues in the area.
EMHRN notes the Security Council resolution extending MINURSO’s mandate until 30 April 2014, but is concerned that the deep disquiet voiced by the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy Christopher Ross about the human rights situation in Western Sahara has not been taken on board.
These fears come on top of a string of condemnations by various independent European and US organizations. In a series of meetings on his two visits to Western Sahara, Christopher Ross heard personal testimonies about the human rights situation, persecution of human rights defenders and the suppression of any event that the Moroccan authorities define as giving succour to independence movements.
In his recent report to the United Nations Human Rights Council (A/HRC/22/53/Add.2), UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez flags up the use of excessive violence against protesters and in detention centres, and says that a human rights monitoring mechanism is urgently needed to improve human rights observance (pt.91).
In the September 2012 Universal Periodic Review on Morocco, the Human Rights Council made five recommendations on fundamental rights, one of which was to set up a MINURSO fundamental rights watch mechanism.
Human rights defenders have for years been calling for MINURSO’s mandate to be extended to monitoring fundamental rights observance as is the case with many other peacekeeping operations. As Juan Mendez notes, the activities of the Moroccan government authority on the matter – the National Human Rights Council – cannot be considered a substitute for such international monitoring.
The Security Council may have welcomed the implementation of the enhanced refugee protection programme developed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in coordination with the Polisario Front, which includes refugee and human rights training and awareness initiatives, but EMHRN still finds it deplorable that human rights is a recurrent talking point for the UN Security Council.
Therefore, EMHRN:
- Calls for the prompt establishment of permanent international human rights watch mechanisms in Western Sahara and the Sahrawi refugee hosting areas, and considers that extending MINURSO’s remit in the matter is wholly consonant with the situation in this region and the nature of its mission;
- Calls on the Moroccan authorities to allow civil society and human rights organizations in Western Sahara to register and carry on their activities;
- Calls on the European institutions, the Member States of the European Union and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean partner states to focus on and bring pressure to bear on Morocco on the matter.