What Geneva Support Group’s Bias Says About Its Agenda in Western Sahara

The Algerian-backed Geneva Support Group is again maneuvering against Morocco’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over Western Sahara.

In its latest hostile, Morocco-bashing maneuver, the Algerian-backed group lamented what it called Morocco’s “human rights violations in the occupied territories” of Western Sahara, urging the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to “make available [Morocco’s] serious violations” in Western Sahara.

The NGO claimed Morocco had violated the UN-brokered ceasefire in the Guerguerat region on November 13, 2020, and denounced the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ lack of forceful response to Morocco’s supposed violations in Guerguerat.

In invoking Gueguerat, the Geneva Support Group is referring to Morocco’s intervention to lift a three-week Polisario blockade that had been obstructing essential commercial and civilian traffic between Morocco and Mauritania.

When Polisario elements stormed and blockaded the crossing point in late 2020, Morocco first seized the UN and sought a diplomatic way out of the separatist group’s military incursions and other provocations in the area.

As Polisario defied and brazenly dismissed multiple calls from the UN to leave Guergueart, however, Morocco took it upon itself to drive the Polisario Front out of the area. Many independent sources and UN officials in the area have reported that Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces lifted the Polisario blockade on November 13, 2020 without causing any human or material losses.

However, both Algeria and the Polisario leadership — and of course their supporters around the world — have for much of the past months obsessed over Morocco’s “violations” and “brutal attacks against civilians” in Guerguerat. In the aftermath of the Guerguerat incidents, the Algerian regime and the Polisario Front even started speaking of a “raging war” in the region, falsely accusing Morocco of breaching the UN-moderated 1991 ceasefire.

Most of these unverified claims are uncritically and approvingly hinted at in the Algiers-backed Geneva-based group’s statement.

Following the failure of its Guerguerat showdown, the Polisario Front announced the collapse of the ceasefire agreement signed with Morocco. Since then, APS, the Algerian news agency, has been sharing news on Polisario’s attacks against the Moroccan military.

Still, the Geneva-based NGO has been sharing biased positions in support of Polisario’s actions and Algerian position against Morocco’s territorial integrity.

In its latest one-sided statement, for example, the NGO claimed that its request for clarification on the violation of human rights in Western Sahara was signed by over 300 organizations.

On the NGO’s website, however, it appears that most of the associations it cited as supporting its call for a UN-led fact-finding investigation intended to indict Morocco are in fact administered by Polisario members living in the EU and other countries.

A group of associations mentioned in the member link either do not have accreditation status or their websites do not even exist on social media or other platforms.

The Support Geneva Group website also features a “donation” section that it claims is part of the humanitarian aid package it regularly sends to the populations in the Polisario-controlled Tindouf camps in Algeria.

However, several reports emphasize the dire conditions Tindouf camps people live in amid lack of aid or embezzlement of food and money support directed to them.

In his most recent annual report on the situation in Western Sahara, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres renewed his concerns regarding the unchanged dire conditions in the Tindouf camps.

Some of the most severe concerns mentioned in Guterres’s report include insufficient food and aid distribution destined for Sahrawis in the region.

The UNSG also noted the insufficient funding for those living in Tindouf refugee camps and the risks associated with the reduction of food assistance.

The concerns have been shared by many reports, with most observers converging in their revelation of an epidemic of embezzlement and smuggling of food and aid as a direct cause of insufficient supplies to Tindouf camps residents.

A recent report from FORSATIN quoted doctors from the Tindouf camps, citing the Polisario leadership’s embezzlement and smuggling of medical equipment supplies meant for the distressed refugees in the camps.

“As soon as they arrive and are photographed, these devices evaporate as if they never existed,” FORSATIN highlighted. A local doctor agreed with this assessment, explaining that the continued humanitarian crisis in the camp despite regular dispatches of food and medical equipment for refugees is “due to the presence of a gang” in the highest echelons of the Polisario leadership.

In 2015, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) cited evidence of the embezzlement of humanitarian aid intended for desperate refugees in the Polisario-run camps.

The report showed the separatist group was directly involved in the sale of humanitarian aid in Mauritania and sub-Saharan markets.

In addition, and amid claims supporting human rights principles, the Geneva Support Group had at no time mentioned the dire and concerning situation that children live in the camps of Tindouf.

Children under 12 are facing exploitation and abuse from the Polisario Front which uses them in its military.

Foreign officials, rights organizations, and various other international groups have been calling for intervention to end the tragedy of child soldiers in Tindouf.

Among critics of the separatist front’s continued use of child soldiers is the International Alliance for the Defense of Rights and Freedoms (AIDL), which recently renewed its condemnation of Polisario’s recruitment of children in Tindouf camps.

“This is an international crime that requires international prosecution and the monitoring of all those involved,” the French NGO said, stressing that recruitment of children in the military or their exploitation is prohibited by international law.