Rabat – Majda Moutchou, Minister Plenipotentiary at Morocco’s Permanent Mission to the UN, outlined Algeria’s “destructive” separatist agenda in North Africa before the Security Council on Friday.
“Algeria, as usual, tried, via its Minister of Foreign Affairs, to inflame this debate and to exploit it for political purposes which betray its destructive separatist agenda in the North African region,” Moutchou said following an intervention by Algeria’s UN representative on the topic of Western Sahara.
During the Security Council debate in New York on the participation of women in international peace and security, the Moroccan representative said that Algeria should be “ashamed” of bringing up the question of the Sahara when it “sequesters entire populations” of women and children in the Tindouf camps.
Moutchou drew the assembly’s attention to reports of slavery, servitude, and sexual violence inflicted on the women in the camps by forces from the separatist Polisario group.
“How dare Algeria come before this Council and talk about the question of the Moroccan Sahara, while it and the Polisario are stealing humanitarian aid intended for populations sequestered in the camps of Tindouf?” she asked, also pointing to reports of the separatist movement exploiting children and compelling them to fight for it.
“These barbaric and criminal practices of recruiting and enlisting kidnapped children are modeled on those of terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda and Daesh,” the diplomat detailed, calling for the separatist movement to be held to justice.
She also denounced Algeria’s continued refusal to conduct a census of the Tindouf populations, saying that a census would “deprive the Polisario and Algerian officials of the money stolen following the misappropriation of humanitarian assistance.”
