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Join on Telegram Rabat – Despite the Polisario’s unrelenting attempts to gain a foothold with the international community, the recent UN report on Western Sahara emphasized that the separatist group has no legal standing in the United Nations.
At a time when the Polisario Front refers to its representatives as ambassadors or envoys within the UN, the UN report refers to them simply as “representatives” in New York.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s report on the situation in Western Sahara mentioned Polisario’s representative three times, referring to the separatist member as “ the representative of Frente Polisario in New York.”
These three mentions are discussed in paragraphs 5, 8, and 39, of the report respectively.
The mention of the Polisario representative invalidates the Polisario’s touted claims that the separatist group is legally recognized and holds a legal status within the United Nations.
Pro-Polisario voices, including Algeria, usually describe the separatist group’s representatives in New York as “permanent ambassadors” in the UN.
In addition to the 2021 report, previous versions of the UNSG’s report on the Sahara conflict also mentioned Polisario’s member as “representative in New York.”
Representatives of the Polisario Front, which advocates separatist claims and is funded by Algeria, have traditionally lived outside the Tindouf camps, which house approximately 90,000 Sahrawis.
The camps are plagued by numerous deficiencies and mired in human rights violations and other abuses from Polisario militias, many NGOs and human rights activists have warned over the years.
In his report, the UNSG also notified the Security Council of the dire condition that Sahrawis are experiencing, including malnutrition.
Guterres cited a series of indicators that explain that the overall conditions in the camps have deteriorated.
“The already fragile socioeconomic situation in the camps further deteriorated due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Guteress said in his report.
The camps have seen an increase in the number of households with “poor and borderline food consumption, with 31.5% of households being borderline, and 5.2 % being poor,” the report shows.
Guterres’s report also repeatedly warned against the challenges related to healthcare access, sanitation, energy, and food.
Despite such alarming indicators on the situation of Sahrawis in the Polisario-governed camps, Algeria and the Polisario leadership have consistently refused to allow a census in the region.
Former Polisario members have long pointed out that Algeria’s and Polisario’s reluctance to allow a census in the Tindouf camps is because the camps have under 20% of Sahrawis.
Hamada El Bihi said that over 80% of the population in the camps is composed of Tuareg people and populations who come from countries across the Sahara desert, including Rguuiba, Niger, Chad, Mali, Algeria, and Libya.
Mustapha Salma Ould Sidi Mouloud, a former Polisario police chief, has said that the population in the camps “includes tribes from the region, especially the Rguibat tribe, which is the largest in the Sahara region.”
He added, “The identification process conducted by the United Nations stood at a figure of just over 84,000 voters, divided equally between the southern provinces and the camps.”
According to Mouloud, at least “half the number of the camps’ populations came to the camps from Mauritania and from Algeria,” while only one-third are of Sahrawi origins.
Several NGOs and international organizations have been calling for a census in the Polisario-administered camps in Tindouf.
Amid continuous reports and complaints implicating the Polisario Front and Algeria in mismanagement, embezzlement, and arbitrary arrests in the camps, several NGOs and international organizations called for a census in the Polisario-administered camps.
In 2015, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) exposed the selling and embezzlement of European aid intended for refugees in the Polisario-run camps.
The report covers the 2003-2007 period and shows that Polisario has long been involved in selling EU aid in the Mauritanian and sub-Saharan markets to buy weapons.
The sold material included blankets, medicines, and construction material sought to help Tindouf camps’ population living in extreme poverty.
Many protests have taken place within the camps in recent years against the restriction of the Sahrawis’ freedom of movement due to the required Algerian authorization for their departure from the camps.
Sit-ins also take place regularly, with families of disappeared Sahrawis constantly calling on the Polisario Front to unveil information about the whereabouts or fate of their relatives.
One such case made international headlines recently when the family of El Khalil Ahmed organized a series of sit-ins to protest against his disappearance.
A former senior Polisario member, Ahmed El Khalil was kidnapped and disappeared two months after he was appointed to monitor the human rights conditions in the Tindouf camps.
In August, the family of Polisario militia member Mohamed Lamine Michan accused the separatist group’s leadership of exploiting Sahrawi youth and endangering their lives with “fake promises.”
After sustaining wounds last year when deployed to attack Morocco’s berm, Michan’s condition gradually declined and he suffered a loss of vision because of the “negligence” of the Polisario leadership, his family charged.
In a letter, Michan’s family denounced the repression, negligence, and false promises of the Polisario leadership.
The family said that their relatives’ suffering is not only due to his wounds and the loss of sight, but also to the “pain of neglect” and “lies.”
