Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat – A Moroccan NGO has spoken out against crimes against children in the Tindouf camps in Algeria.
Hefdi Mohammed al-Bashir, President of the relatively-unknown Moroccan NGO “Sahara Observatory for Wealth and Human Rights,” spoke about severe crimes committed by the Polisario Front against incarcerated youngsters.
Speaking yesterday in Casablanca, on the sidelines of a festive demonstration hosted by the Moulay Rachid Cultural Complex on the National Day of the Child, al-Bashir emphasized the separatist group’s breaches of all international agreements pertaining to children’s rights.
Under the tagline “Children’s Rights, Stakes, and Challenges,” the National Human Rights Council of Morocco (CNDH) organized this event in collaboration with civil society organizations and in collaboration with the Moulay Rachid region.
Young people incarcerated in the Tindouf camps are exposed to the most heinous forms of abuse, including brutality, exploitation, and forced recruitment, al-Bachir stated.
For him, the Polisario Front is eager to separate jailed children from their parents and send them overseas in order to agitate, brainwash, and turn them against everyone who opposes the Front’s separatist ideology.
Al-Bachir accuses the separatist group of forcibly recruiting these children, in flagrant violation of all international norms and conventions related to children’s rights. Such actions would conflict particularly with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the International Criminal Court Statute, he added.
While the UN Security Council strongly condemns the recruitment and use of children in armed conflicts and demands a stop to these activities immediately, al-Bachir confirmed that recruiting children into armed organizations is a war crime.
He concluded by stating that the separatist group is promoting a set of audio-visual tapes that document the process of recruiting children and pressuring them to take up arms. These actions would be prohibited by the additional protocol to the 1977 Geneva Convention, and the optional protocol to the 2000 Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.
Read Also: Research Center for the Prevention of Child Soldiers Opens in Dakhla
